I found this interesting article from the flight safety foundation, avition medecine, titled "WHEN BOTTLE MEETS THROTTLE". In it, statements about how ICAO supposedly deals with alcoholism among pilots are stunning...
http://208.37.5.10/asw/sept06/asw_sept06_p32-36.pdf
The problem about alcool in a cockpit should not be analysed at a personal level, nor should we draw conclusions based on generalism. But more importantly alcool problems do not start, nor end, in a cockpit, far from that.
Alcool amoung pilots IS A PROBLEM, and it all starts with
-Medical exams: I do not know about the US, but in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia, the medical exams are jokes.
-Random checks: again, in all continents above mentionned, they are non existant.
-Airline responsability: I strongly believe airlines have more responsability than just writting in an Ops manual rules concerning alcool... I personnaly know so many colleagues having serious alcool problems, and never ever did I hear about mesures taken by any airline, pro/actively, to prevent alcoholic personal to be in command of an airline aircraft (not being drunk does not mean the person is not an alcoholic!!).
-Culture: it seems to me that for most anglo/saxe, drinking is a proof of virility. Again, any heavy drinking habit is easily detectable by medical check, so why is it that nothing is done to tackle the problem (an alcoholic can only heal through abstinence, according to medical studies).
-Last but not least, ICAO: in that article (
http://208.37.5.10/asw/sept06/asw_sept06_p32-36.pdf), you can read that according to ICAO "alcoholism amoung crewmembers is relatively infrequent, and taht less than 1 pilot in every 5000 worldwide loses his/her license each year because of problems associated with alcoolim...". Well, that proves what I was trying to develop, the problem is not tackled seriously. My airline has around 5000 pilots, and I personnaly know let say... 100 pilots that have serious alcool problems, that are by medical definition alcoholics.
Now, as a pilot, we have the choice. Let the media trash a pilot now and then because he/she was caught drunk or with a alcool level in his/her blood that is illegal while on duty. Or should we rather start to solve our problem by accepting that there is a problem, and more importantly impose on the ICAO that mesures are taken at all level to eradicate alcoholism amoung the pilots (and not just drunk pilots to show up at work).