A DWI (Driving While Impaired) along with certain other driving convictions can easily lead to the loss of your FAA license. You don't need to go anywhere close to an airport for that to happen.
There's a box on the medical application that asks specifically if you have been convicted of a DWI, although it may not be phrased in quite that way.
It's a real nightmare, being a pilot with a DWI, when you are definitely out of business for quite some time. There's a real gotcha in that you essentially are required to turn yourself in to the FAA for a DWI. If you do not then there's this federal database that tracks DWIs (and certain other offenses such as doing 150 mph in a school zone) that will, sooner or later, link you the pilot to you the drunk driver.
It's a brave man who drinks before he drives or flies nowadays. You are always gambling when you drink, gambling with whatever rate your liver is able to burn off the alcohol and how much alcohol you have imbibed, along with the odd fact that many people will have a tiny amount of alcohol in the bloodstream anyway. You can be walking around with .001% BAC just for starters!
It's no excuse, but it's quite true that knocking back a few pints of real British ale could put you over the limit where the same amount of what passes for beer in the States, perhaps just 3.2% alcohol, would not.