As question and point interest to all the guys and gals who have been supportive of re-habilitation of this individual (who would seem to have disregarded his professional responsibilities and carried out a criminal act).
How many of you would be arguing for tolerance, understanding, re-habilitiation and re-integration if this was a teacher at your kids school who had been downloading kiddieporn? Not so many of you i think yet all of the arguments you use could apply. (treatment / supervision etc)
Alcohol is so much a part of our culture and it's use so widely accepted that anyone who falls foul of it is invariably "a nice bloke who made a mistake".
I'm a professional Pilot who drinks and enjoys drinking Alcohol. I also know that it is my responsibility to ensure that it does not affect my flying. If it does then it is right and proper that i suffer the consequences (before anyone else does).
Society is already suffering hugely as a result of the behavior of people who are addicted to or abuse various substances. Individuals are still responsible for their actions, even if they are addicted to the point that they cannot control them,.
Stands back and waits for uproar.

Judging a fellow by what one read not really knowing all the facts is unfortunately common today. One would expect a bit of understanding from its own breed, but it turns out in this case that your colleagues are your worst enemies.
Those colleagues of course never ever drunk a glass of alcohol in their career less than 10 hours before reporting to duty and would immediately report to the authorities even their best friend if they seven suspected he had one too many while a work.
They of course have never suffered any serious problems in their life and can judge without a doubt that they would never resort to drinking alcohol to soften the burden when that happens.
Now does that make it all right to drink on duty then ? , of course not, but sending the guy in Jail and prevent him for pursuing a career ever after is neither the solution one would expect from some of his colleagues..


And yes, it is all about giving second chances. The whole life is based on second chances, I would not be here today if I had not been given second chances a some point , and probably with similar “ Ayatollahs” in charge , the Wright Brothers would have continued making bicycles.

Now, I am going to open my bottle of St Julien for Lunch. :E

Drunks
 

Ignition Override

Singapore is actually a very nice place, oh and it is not part of the middle east. This seems to be a common misconception…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0AhvoxW9XI

Had many a good beer there.:ok:

Now, I am going to open my bottle of St Julien for Lunch. :E[/quote]

Hope you are not going to fly :E

I agree with you, though. I've known the fellow in question for some fifteen years. I have flown with him many times and he was always a very meticulous, cautious, and dedicated professional.
Something went wrong along the line.

Jail will not teach him anything; it will only serve as humiliation and severe punishment. Losing his job and career was severe enough.

You might be right regarding these numbers.

As a non-drinker, all these limits mean very little to me :confused:

Too true, ATC Watcher.

Hope you are not going to fly :E


[/QUOTE]

Not today no, my aircraft is on maintenance this week,;) but I might have . But I just said I was opening the bottle, : you see there is a whole range of possibilities between opening a bottle and emptying it on my own .
If I was going to fly later in the day, I would have limited my consumption to a quarter of a glass with my meal and shared the rest with my lunch company.
This is our tradition in the country I am originating from.
.
Back in the good old days where Air France was an airline operating airplanes driven by cables and rods and flown by a team of 3 , it was customary for the cockpit crew to have a similar half a glass of wine with their crew meals. During that period the company did not crash an aircraft every 2 years like it does now. In fact if you look your statistics up you will find that AF did not have a single crash in 20 years during that period.

I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions , but not too serious ones please..:)

Pilots and Alcohol
 

My name is Lyle Prouse and I was the infamous Northwest Airlines Captain back in March of '90 who was arrested on Northwest Flight 650 (FAR-MSP) for flying drunk, along with the copilot and second officer.

Subsequently, I was fired by NWA, stripped of my flight certificates, and lost my medical due to alcoholism. I became a national pariah, was sent to federal prison for 16 months, served 14, and went broke within 30 days of the arrest. Furthermore, the trial judge put sanctions on me to insure I'd never fly again due to my age (51 at the time).

I want to be clear about a number of things. First, I make no excuses, I accept complete responsibility, and I openly acknowledge that everything that happened to me was fair and appropriate. Period.

Having said that, let me turn to some of the comments offered by a number of pilots in this forum. Some of those comments indicate some knowledge and understanding of the subject of alcohol/alcoholism and some indicate ignorance bolstered by arrogance.

When I talk about alcoholism I separate the issues between the acts and behavior (and the consequences that flow from that) - and the disease itself.

Being an alcoholic does not relieve me of responsibility for what I do nor does it grant me any immunity or excuse anything. Anytime I commit an unlawful act, alcoholic or not, it's incumbent upon me to accept the consequences of that act.

It should be noted that while alcoholism is not an excuse for behavior it very clearly explains a lot of it in the case of the alcoholic. It might surprise some to know that since I got sober over 16 yrs ago I've never flown drunk or received a DUI... Nor have I done any of the shameful, disgraceful, offensive, and embarrassing things that drunks routinely do.

One of THE first steps of recovery demands acceptance of personal responsibility and being accountable. So the talking heads, Bill O'Reilly for one, who declare that the only reason for treating alcoholism as a disease is so those with it can escape responsibility, is absurd beyond words. Those ideas only come from non-alcoholics...in my experience.

I have been sober since the date of my arrest, over 16 years and some nine months now. I am active in recovery, speak all over the United States and Canada (for free, of course), have been involved with virtually every major airline in their alcohol programs. I am of Native American heritiage and I've spoken on reservations in the US and Canada, and at Native American sobriety conventions.

I served out my prison time, came out broke and disgraced, and eventually earned back each of the four licenses I needed, commencing with the private and doing it, quite literally, from the ground up...after the judge miraculously lifted the sanctions on me. I did it the same way I stay sober, one day at a time, one thing at a time, one step at a time, and one license at a time.

I'd never had a private license - I came out of the Marine Corps as a Vietnam vet and quickly acquired a Com'l ticket and inst rating after a quickie test...and was hired 3 weeks later by NWA (Aug '68). I had gone in as a barely 18 yr old private and I left 11 1/2 yrs later as a Captain and jet pilot with an excellent reputation.

Not quite four years after my arrest and imprisonment, the Pres/CEO of NWA, Mr. John Dasburg, personally reinstated me to full flight status at NWA. It was an act of personal courage on his part that the word "extraordinary" doesn't even begin to approach.

I retired honorably at age 60, in Sept '98, as a 747 captain, having done all I could to fully vindicate all those who had believed in me. Additionally, the tough Minnesota judge who tried and sent me to prison suggested, as I retired, that I apply for a presidential pardon and said he'd support it even tho he'd NEVER supported a petition for pardon in his 16 yrs on the bench. Two years later I rec'd a Pres Pardon - a HUGE, life altering event for a federal felon!

To one contributor who said alcoholism is a lifetime disease and implied we who are recovering are delicately balanced on the razor's edge and might relapse anytime, I say he is only partially correct. It is a lifetime disease, that's why it's called Alcohol-ISM and not Alcohol-WASM. But so is diabetes and a number of other chronic diseases. And, yes, some never make it, never recover, and never stay sober - and they die (both my parents took this disease to their graves).

But to discount the millions of us around the world who live good, productive, solid lives in recovery displays a shallow and ignorant way of thinking. And to say no alcoholic should ever be trusted in the cockpit because they might relapse is absurd. Anyone in the cockpit might keel over, have a stroke, heart attack, brain anueryism, or some other possible problem and it's nonsense thinking to make a blanket pronouncement and condemnation of everyone based on what "might" happen.

Many don't make it. But many don't survive cancer, heart disease, and other calamities of life. The airlines have THE most successful rate of alcoholism recovery among any group, virtually double the norm in the rest of our society. And they do a good job of weeding out those who will not or cannot get sober - and that's as it should be.

I'm well aware that there are those, still today, who think I should have been put against a wall and shot; and that I most certainly NEVER should have been allowed to fly again. Fortunately, I don't think that reflects most of the heart and soul of the American character who, traditionally, support and encourage the underdog and applaud comebacks.

Alcoholism is a treatable, recoverable disease. Today there are over 3500 recovering alcoholic pilots flying for airlines. One of the leading docs I know (who's worked in the aviation/alcoholism field for over 30 yrs) says, "When I get on the plane I glance in the cockpit. If it's a face I recognize, I breathe a sigh of relief. If it's one I don't...then I sit in the back and wonder."

To each his/her own. I doubt anything I've said here will change any minds and may only provoke further debate. My only purpose here is to speak the truth as I know it and do it quietly and clearly.

Being an alcoholic was something I first viewed as a disgraceful, shameful, stigmatic curse. It has evolved into the greatest thing that ever occurred to me because of what it has forced me to do. My kids won't have to watch me die a grim, lingering alcoholic death, as I had to with my parents. My life today is geared toward giving back more than I ever took, making amends where ever possible, and being constantly grateful for the joy of sobriety and the brightness of each day.

What I have expressed here today is not something unique to me. It is shared by virtually every recovering person I know. I just came home a few minutes ago from speaking in Denver last night. As is always the case, I met people who inspire me and make me glad I was forced into a program of recovery I NEVER would have willingly accepted when I was drinking.

Blue skies,
Lyle Prouse
Ex federal inmate 04478-041
Ret'd NWA Capt 086140
Marine Capt 086099

With any addiction or habit comes the issue of personal responsibility.

I have been and am a pilot for over 54 years, with my decision to seek help to cure an addiction to alcohol came an even greater resposibility to ensure that should I ever decide to go back to drinking again I would never ever again fly an airplane.

To concrete this resolve I gave both my doctor and Transport Canada access to my medical records at Shick Shadel Hospital with the instructions that should I ever decide to drink alcohol again my aviation medical and license was to be cancelled...period.

It is all part of decision making and a debt I owe to the industry.

And I do not hide behind anonimity as I have nothing to hide.

I only post this in the hope someone out there may be able to make the right decision in their own life.

Chuck E

The dreaded alccohol!
 

About 20 years ago, I was a FM with an LGW airline. We had a captain who was always "smelling of drink" and I had received many complaints from cabin staff. We could never get to the bottom of things until he was caught out on an overseas detachment by the FO who called me one night and told me the capt had been drinking heavily during the early evening and was now in bed, but what should he do? I explained that as he was the only other crew member there, if he still suspected the capt was under the influence in the morning, it was up to him to stop the flight even if he "went sick" himself.
In the event, the aircraft got airborne and flew the sector and I assumed all was well. The CP had been brought into the story however and grounded the capt on landing where he was breathalized and found to be well over the top.
The individual was dowgraded to F/O and the we placed him on a monthly monitoring regime by the company doctor. He agreed to this action, but within a couple of weeks requested to leave the company. Although we felt he was taking his problem away with him, we let him go. He joined another small airline and within six months had been fired for drinking on duty.
Sadly the pilot concerned died later, but my point is that one can take a horse to water..... but.... We were prepared to go an extra mile for the guy but in the end he was determined to keep drinking and there was only one outcome possible.

L Prouse

Amazing post, well done.

Goodness Lyle, that is a wonderful post.

Lyle:

You have my admiration.

Chuck E.

When I read comments such as those by niknak, who sincerely hopes the pilot “serves the full sentance (sic)” and “never, ever flys (sic) again”, rigga who thinks making him serve "all his small sentence won't hurt him much more” and Saskatoon who thinks the pilot deserves “no compassion at all”, I feel reassured.

Reassured that, despite three decades in a career in which I’ve prosecuted and defended people who’ve been sent to prison, and sent people to prison myself for anything from a month to Life, I can still have compassion for people whose lives have fallen apart because of a single mistake.

Those who speak so lightly about decent hard-working people being sent to prison clearly have no comprehension of the enormous impact of a prison sentence upon them, particularly if it happens late in their lives.
I've sat in a cell with them just after they've been sentenced, doing my best to explain what to expect after they are carted off in handcuffs to prison. Even when they knew prison was inevitable, they are reeling from the shock because their nightmare has now become a reality.
I also know that, however dreadful they feel then, they are going to feel much worse when they wake the next morning and the terrible reality really sinks in.

How anyone can have no compassion for the pilot is beyond my comprehension, as is the hope that his career is finished for ever.
(Opinions will differ about whether sending someone like this pilot to prison serves any useful purpose, but that's for another discussion. )

The suggestion by some that the majority view here is simply professional pilots being loyal to a colleague is silly. I’m not a professional pilot, and nor FWIW am I a heavy drinker.


Interesting, impressive and very moving posts by Chuck Ellsworth and Lyle Prouse.
I salute them both.
Their contributions are far more thought-provoking than some of the taboid-style drivel in the sanctimonious posts.



FL

Lyle

Fantastic post, many congratulations on your achievements. My heart goes out to you - must have been a difficult few years. Have a great retirement!

Well done Lyle and I concur with the above posters about the fine quality of your post. I stated earlier Well I do hope now he has been reading this thread and in particular your post. :ok:

Response to Flying Lawyer
 

Thank you, sir. Your description of what happens to a client immediately after sentencing is disturbingly accurate.

At my sentencing, the judge offered to let all three of us remain free pending appeals, since this was the first time this law had ever been applied and there were many complex legal issues. The other two opted to remain free. I told the judge I had been convicted and it was time for me to go into prison...because I had learned how to "live life on life's terms" as we said in treatment, and I refused to whistle in the dark.

I was terrified of walking in there but I recalled something I'd learned as a Marine, that "Courage is not the absence of fear; it's the ability to continue in the face of it."

No one who has ever walked into prison will ever again glimpse life or the world as he or she once did prior. When I speak from the podium I never talk about prison...because I think it's irrelevant to my recovery. But my recovery, the power of what I learned in each of the 12 steps, and the principles behind each one, greatly impacted how I handled prison.

The comments that follow are simply a narrative; they are NOT a plea for sympathy because I deserved none. I did what I did and I got what I got, and it was fair. However, as my judge said when he sentenced us, "The greatest sorrow is reserved for the wives and children, but I do not have the power to ease that."

The public at large, as you so eloquently describe, has no clue about the impact of being locked up in the midst of 24 hour insanity that seemingly has no end.

The smell of rain is different in there, the moon looks different at night, and the feel of a breeze on one's face is not the same as free air. I was accustomed to being free...and it was not easy for me. So I did it one day at a time...shorter when necessary...for 424 days.

There are two incredibly sick groups in prison and the sickest group goes home every night. It is a system that is so sick, twisted, and obscene that no one believes it and it's self-protected in that regard. It is a system designed to emotionally castrate and permanently scar all who enter. And it is usually successful.

No one can describe the feeling of having a wife and children come visit their convict husband and father, dressed in drab prison khakis, treated as a sub-human by the guards, and surrounded by the oppressing prison atmosphere.

I had been the standard bearer in my family for duty, honor, country. I had been the one who espoused character, honesty, and integrity as my kids grew up. But in the disgrace I brought upon myself it all seemed hollow and for naught.

In the long term I was able to experience something one of my meditation books said. "My father didn't tell me how to live," it said, "He lived and let me watch him do it."

I never expected to have to be the example that was forced my way. But hopefully, what my children witnessed as I made the long climb back out of the blackest valley of disgrace and despair to the beauty of the sunlit mountain top, may have more impact on them than all the words I spoke in all the years preceding. Walking the walk will always take precedence over talking the talk. And it was a long walk indeed. A million miles, one step at a time.

There are those posting here who cavalierly dismiss and declare, with a wave of their hand and a smug smile, how frivolous prison seems to them. But no one who has been there, or who has had a son or daughter there, will do that.

Or they will utter what I consider the most inane comment of all: "Well...they should have thought of that before they did it." Think about it a moment. If people did actually did that there would never be any crime. What I did, and what the other pilots did who've gotten in trouble with alcohol, was not premediated; it was not intentional. We didn't sit down and weigh the pros and cons. Not one of us said, "I think, given the wonderful life and career I have, that I'll go out and destroy it tonight, end up in the headlines, and go to prison." It's a stupidly ridiculous comment that most of us simply nod affirmatively to and never give any further thought. It may sound good but it flies in the face of human nature.

I will not take time nor space to share with you the experience I had with the attorney representing me. He was as impacted by this whole experience as I was and our relationship became a unique one as we went through this together. He worked for me for several years afterwards, refusing to take a cent (which I didn't have but would have paid over time) - and his response was always the same - "I believe in you and I'm staying to the end, wherever that is." And he did.

So many others also did.

Two weeks after I entered prison my wife came in and told me nine of my fellow pilots had self assessed themselves and were making our house payments. Two of them I didn't even know. And they did this for nearly four years in spite of four concerted attempts on my part to get them to stop.

There are many good people in this world...and then there are the grandiose, the smug, the superior, and the ignorant. To those who somehow feel they've lived a life free of fault I simply suggest they may have set their standards far too low.

Blue skies,
Lyle Prouse

Lyle, there are just too many words that are appro to your post - honest, eloquent, thoughtful, human, understanding, courage, determination, enlightment, educational. Rather than infamous, might I suggest an award winning tale of achievement. At the end of the day I stand somewhat in awe of your achievement and can say nothing but BRAVO ZULU. Also to Chuck congratulations - BRAVO ZULU.
Blue Skies to you both,
Brian
PS Lyle how come you use MY sign off. ;)

Lyle, I'd like to think that there are a few who've posted on this thread who might, after reading your two excellent posts, reconsider the attitude they've adopted over this matter.

I'd also like to meet and shake the hand of the man from North West who gave you the second chance. Sadly, I don't think there are too many individuals out there in airline senior management today who practise that brand of management.

Lyle,

Your posts are amongst the finest I have ever read, moving and thought provoking.

Thank you and enjoy a long and happy retirement Sir!

Lyle, Thank you. That does indeed give one perspective. BTW: For those interested, a somewhat extended version of Lyle's story is contained at the AA site (amongst the personal stories - "Grounded"). {I trust there is no problem pointing this out for those who wish to read it?}

There's quite a range of responses here, from the knee-jerk 'ban him from flying for life' to some very moving accounts of recovery from alcoholism.

I have seen this from both sides, having to work with alcoholics (who usually went unreported and untreated until they could be quietly got rid of, in the old-fashioned way) and also being perched on the rim of the glass just about to slip on a wet spot and fall in. I was lucky to have moved way back from that but I can still think, 'There but for the grace of God go I,' when I read about someone being arrested in this way. People who come across all pompous and self-righteous probably are either deluding themselves or else lack imagination and compassion.

It really is pretty weird the way we have come to accept taking small doses of a neurotoxin ('intoxicated' simply means 'poisoned' in everyday speech, after all) to ease our way in society but it's a given just like smoking, and we have to deal with it. Some of us manage better than others.

Aviation is very strange in the way that it has a very boozy sub-culture (when I think about where I met this or that fellow pilot that was usually in a bar, of course) and now very strict surveillance of drinkers. You could call that 'schizophrenic' in layman's terms.

Perhaps it would be useful for us to be more willing to intervene before it gets to the stage of a fellow pilot being arrested and smeared all over the tabloids but that 'denial' stage of alcoholism usually gets in the way of that. I don't have a ready answer to this problem.

The first pilot to be arrested at LHR (and subsequently jailed) for an alcohol-related offence under the new UK laws allowed the full facts of his case to be reported on PPRuNe in the hope that others might benefit from his experience.
It's an interesting thread (if you ignore the distraction of one poster making the same point over and over again in post after post): LHR Breathtest


Rigga's claim that this is 'just the latest of a continuing series of "misdemeanors" that are not given a high enough profile' is absurd.
Every arrest on suspicion has been reported here, whether or not the pilot was later prosecuted.
We even had a report of that nonsense at Manchester where two police constables decided to breath-tested both pilots after a passenger told police the pilots must be drunk because the aircraft had to do a go-around. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Yes, believe it or not, it actually happened: Pilots breathalysed after go-around

His lack of knowledge may partly be explained because (as he says) he's not a pilot but, given his comments such as "a continuing series" and "just another one", it may also be because the facts don't fit his preconceived notions and prejudices. It doesn't seem to occur to him that not many incidents are reported here because there aren't many incidents, despite what he and tabloid journos would like to believe.

The 'smoking hole' and 'hundreds may have died' stuff often trotted out when this topic comes up is not borne out by the stats.


We also had a very useful discussion when the new law was introduced (again, if you ignore distracting posts) : Alcohol and Flying: The new law



.

This chap has lost his job, his house and indeed, his career. It is clear that turning up in such a state ahead of his flight is not something he did for the hell of it so I am at a loss to understand precisely what sending him to prison is going to achieve - especially as the prisons are supposedly so full that dangerous criminals are persistently given derisory sentences and let out early.

Doors - possibly it's because it's against the law? As a deterrent, maybe? It's safe to say that if you're going to turn up over the limit and try to fly, the Gulf region is not the cleverest place in the world to do it in. Not to pick on the Gulf, though - you've seen from other posts it isn't legal in the US of A either.

To Brian Abraham re: my sign off
 

Hi Brian,

I took the "Blue skies" sign off from a friend of mine, Frank Frey, about 12 years ago. Frank was a kind and gentle man, a former Marine Captain and pilot who was dismissed from the service due to his drinking. He was unable to pursue flying as a living and worked as a fry cook for Waffle House.

Frank was one of us who never managed to get sober and he killed himself after many struggles to recover. He was a tormented soul and he and I spent many hours together, talking about recovery, spending time together, and attending meetings.

Once, when Frank visited me in prison, he smuggled a Mrs. Winner's chicken and biscuit sandwich into the visiting room in his sock. After the visiting room filled up I gulped it down, so fast I barely had time to taste it. It was an act of kindness I never forgot.

Some would view Frank as a hopeless drunk. I saw him otherwise because I understand the disease of alcoholism, and I shed tears at the news of his suicide. Interesting, isn't it, how we view victims of cancer or Alzheimer's and have great sympathy and compassion for them...while we see alcoholics and have nothing but disgust and contempt.

In my sixteen years sober I have lost 36 friends to this disease. Some I have known better than others, but all have been personal friends. Early in my sobriety I was angry when these things took place, considering their loss of life as a needless and unecessary waste. I had always felt that way about my parents' deaths.

As time went on and I understood more, my attitude changed. As I viewed my sobriety more as a gift than an accomplishment, the level of my compassion grew. So today when I attend a funeral of someone who didn't make it, I stand over the casket, look down, and quietly think, "Thank you, my friend, for your sacrifice. Thank you for showing me what will happen if I do what you did. Thank you for allowing me to live another day sober." I am able to convert a negative into a positive if my attitude is what it should be.

And I never lose sight of the fact that the person in the coffin could be me, as well as the drunk sleeping in the doorway or in an alley. As has been said earlier, "There but for the grace of God..."

Blue skies,
Lyle

X2
As a graduate of UND up in good old Grand Forks. ND in 1989 i remember this story in the news. Wonderful to hear your "side" of things Lyle and what you have endured up to this point.
You're winning. :ok:
Enjoy retirement!

What became of the other flight crew? Did they go through the same sentencing as you? treatment etc....re certification?

Consequences for drinking
 

Dear Doors,

None of us would ever recover if we didn't have consequences to face. The compulsion to drink is powerful and something must be there to help overcome it. Sometimes it's the loss of family, job, self-respect, or blistering headlines and a prison sentence. We must "reach our bottom," where ever that may be. And sometimes the bottom is death.

If the price of our drinking (sometimes refered to as "the high price of low living") didn't somehow become more than we can afford, in whatever currency is important to us, we would continue - period. So consequences are important and vital.

The concept of "enabling" by friends and family simply means that they continually rescue someone who's drinking and allow them to avoid needed consequences. Bailing them out of jail, lying to employers when they miss work, or any one of a million other examples, only adds to the problem and prolongs it. Although usually motivated by love and concern for the individual, it is, in fact, the cruelest thing one can do and eventually results in literally "loving someone to death."

Blue skies,
Lyle Prouse

Lyle- respect man! You have conquered that demon, and nobody is under any misapprehension it has been, and still is, easy. You are a glowing example that restoration is possible and justified. I don't think we should take pilot-jealous, idiotic posts like niknak's seriously. A more fatuous, spiteful posting we haven't seen here for some time. Good luck in your lifelong rehabilitation- the trust and respect shown to you is justified!

I wonder whether we will ever have violent criminals and murderers punished in the same way niknak wants this pilot punished for life?

Chuck and Lyle - well done mates, on all counts.

If he's technically competent, then shouldn't we revert to the rule which says that you're not allowed to fly if you're under the influence?

Some have alluded to the driving analogy. I don't know of too many places which ban alcoholics per se from driving, but pretty well all ban anyone from driving if they're under the influence.

If he's sober, and can control the aircraft, then what's the problem? If he falls off the wagon and turns up blotto, then just like anyone else, he can't fly that trip.

QED and consistent application of the rules.

Maybe this guy's mistake was just to not call in sick.

I have seen guys out there reeking of booze but totally upright and able to fly very well indeed; terminal alcoholics running on booze far better than trying to cope without! You really think someone like that would consider calling in sick... for what? He's coping just fine, thank you very much!

I once had this very man 'on the carpet.' Of course mine was a very small carpet (acting Deputy Chief Pilot), I was ex-military but a former enlisted man not once an Officer and a Gentleman and I was taken to be just over-reacting to such facts as that, yes, he kept a bottle in his room.

I was told that was only 'to entertain guests.' I had to point out that I sometimes entertained guests too but that didn't entail keeping a bottle in my room! Well, nothing worked until the hammer had to come down, when the guy ended up having to go all the way down, no job, no licence, before he could work his way back up to living without booze. That is often how it is.

When you look at it in the light of experiences like that one it's much better to treat drinking as a disease (whether you choose to believe that or not) like any other that is treatable and often controllable. Otherwise you have your closet drinker putting people at risk until he's caught. It is much safer to get the problem out in the open, I think.

Big airlines are not really all that charitable towards their employees, are they? I think they take the approach they do, treating alcoholism as a disease, for very sound safety reasons.

Lyle
Check your PM's

To "Another Number's" Post
 

First, no alcoholic is "reformed." They're recover(ed), or recovering, as I prefer.

"Reformed" might be appropriate for someone who's lived a life of crime, but alcoholics are not bad people who need to become good. They're sick and need to become well. And that's what recovery is about.

Yes, I WOULD give the keys to the Oval office to someone you refer to as "a reformed drunk." Why? Because I know what it takes to recover...and to live a life of recovery.

Not only that but when I need a doctor I go to one I know who's in recovery. I do the same if I need an attorney. And I feel much more comfortable in a business deal if I know that person is recovering. I'll discuss why shortly.

You are shot-through with tons of misinformation, as much of your phraseology certainly confirms.

Recovery from alcoholism is not the same as with other diseases. A cancer victim, for example, simply wants the cancer removed and a return to life as he or she once knew it. For an alcoholic, the alcohol is NOT the problem; it's the solution and merely a symptom of the real problem, which is the manner in which he or she responds to life itself. How we see things, how we react to things, what our belief system is, or has become, and how it plays into our reactions - THAT is the problem, buried deep within us and often covered by many false fronts and facades. The bottom line is that we cannot merely excise alcohol from our lives and achieve our goal. By so doing we only address a symptom and not the root cause. And most fail when they attempt to do it that way.

One of the prevailing attitudes of society, and certainly yourself, is that a recovering alcoholic will always be "less than," damaged goods, never as good as others or as he or she should have been.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I know millionaires, CEO's of a couple of Fortune 500 companies, priests, ministers, a world-famous heart surgeon (among tons of other doctors), prominent attorneys, judges, congressmen, sports superstars, and a whole plethora of others - all solidly recovering. I also know the homeless, the spurned, and the hopeless who are struggling.

Not long ago a man came up to me after I'd spoken somewhere. Years earlier he'd been living under a bridge, a hopeless drunk. He smiled as he shook my hand and told me he'd just finished his PhD. I get to witness these things all the time, everywhere I go.

An alcoholic who recovers must change his or her entire life; they must go above and beyond anything previous in order to stay sober and live happily. I am infinitely better at anything I do today, or have EVER done, due to my sobriety. Whether it's being a husband and father, flying an airplane, or just trying to be a better human being.

I watch recovering people die from horrific diseases and do so with a smile on their face and a whispered sense of gratitude for sobriety clear up to the end. I watch them deal with the loss of children and never turn back to the bottle. I watch them confront every imaginable calamity that life offers and find refuge in their recovery and their fellow recovering alcoholics who never leave their side. Recovering alcoholics are, in my view, the toughest, most tempered and resilient - and inspirational - people I know. I've been sober a long while, spoken all over the US and Canada (and once in Spain), and I know virtually thousands and thousands of recovering alcoholics. And what I've reported here is not unusual in the least.

So, yes, I would turn the keys over to anyone in ANY position of importance...if I knew they were recovering.

I hope you open and widen your horizons, learn more about all this, and become enlightened about this subject.

Blue skies,
Lyle

I am not right up to speed on this one, and I don't even like the guy, but isn't part of George W. Bush's personal narrative that he was a bit of a booze-hound before Jesus H. Christ got him straightened out? It is certainly so that he was once arrested for DWI (Driving While Intoxicated). I remember that because there was a fuss about Bush family influence having the charge dropped from the records or something.

Now I believe it is so that he doesn't drink at all but he sure does seem to feature in a lot of photos of him praying. Well, whatever works!

Depending on how you wish to look at that you could certainly argue that there is indeed a former alcoholic in the Oval Office. Any narrative like this one about a politician should be taken with a grain of salt, of course. From the Bush side it could be that religion solved a big problem. From the anti-Bush side it could be that there was made out to be a big problem when there really wasn't. The truth could lie somewhere in between these two. You really cannot judge such things.

A lot of us who are very 'down' on 'problem drinkers' might well have a problem ourselves that we just don't want to think about. I used to read those boring articles about how many 'units' of alcohol one was allowed per week and be amused to note that was a bit less than what I often got through in a night, when I was by no means the champion toper! At least I wasn't all tanked up at 1 a.m. before an early start but in strict terms I was a 'binge drinker' for sure. So? Most of us living the life in West Africa were; if you weren't you had trouble fitting in.

For other reasons I was told that I could have one glass of white wine per day but that more than that would not be a good idea. I just laughed in my doctor's face at that one. I told him straight up that 'one glass of white wine per day' was PATHETIC! 'Doctor,' I said, 'you call that drinking?! Pah! Drinking is three or four pints of beer, at a minimum! Your offer is unacceptable. I QUIT!' That beat looking like a poofter!

LP
 

Mind if I PM you as a non flyer? Groundie in dispatch

I think one of the earlier posts was by someone who claims to have known the pilot in question for some years. This post stated that the pilot is not an alcoholic.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the situation, what happened surely does not automatically make this man an "alcoholic".

I am an extremely infrequent visitor to this forum, but when I read the news article involved I dropped in to hear the views of Ppruners in regard to pilots and alcohol, because anybody involved closely with the industry knows there is a very close connection between alcohol and aviation. Does anybody want to deny that?

I simply want to say that the first two posts by Lyle Prouse were among the finest posts I have read anywhere on Pprune, and they don't apply just to pilots. God speed, Lyle. :ok:

if you are saying there is any more of a connection between alcohol and those working in aviation as opposed to banking, law, journalism etc etc
then yes, I'd deny it