This blog is about alcoholism with particular emphasis on the destructive behavior patterns exhibited by those alcoholics who have not yet reached the final, self-destructive stage. In other words, most of them
A co-pilot on a charter plane in Michigan bound for Massachusetts was
arrested Thursday after a colleague suspected that he was drunk.
Traverse City police Capt. Kevin Dunklow said the Talon Air
co-pilot’s breath test showed a blood-alcohol level of 0.30, nearly four
times the legal threshold for drunken driving.
Talon Air praised its employee for discovering the suspect was drunk.
“We are very proud of Captain Manny Ramirez’ immediate action in
detecting the co-pilot’s condition and removing him from his position,”
Talon Air said. “This is yet another example of Talon Air’s safety
procedures working effectively on behalf of our clients and for airport
safety.”
Talon Air said the co-pilot was “immediately terminated” following the incident. His name hasn’t been released.
Considering the difficulty of identifying alcoholics it is probable that the percentage of licensed commercial pilots who are active alcoholics is similar to the percentage for the general public.
" ... When we were kids, my sisters and I had a house rule: if it’s after
seven, don’t answer the phone. None of us wanted to be the one to pick
up if it was dad, his voice dulled, the words slurred and sprawling."
Phil
Parker, the son of a Baptist preacher, said he had never tasted liquor
until his Harvard graduate school classmates lured him into a smoky
cocktail lounge for the first time.
“This
night in the bar was like no other time in my life,” he wrote years
later. “Not only was I completely at ease, but I actually loved all the
strangers around me and they loved me in return, I thought, all because
of this magic potion, alcohol.”
After
that, he wrote, he lived only to drink. He graduated, but was fired
from one teaching job after another, wound up in an asylum and finally
landed homeless on the then-squalid Bowery in Manhattan in the
mid-1960s. There, he met a social worker, a member of Alcoholics
Anonymous, who told him how she had sobered up.
The techno music pioneer has reached middle age, with a new memoir out about his struggles with alcohol, poverty and success.
... Moby, born Richard Melville Hall and now 50 years old, has sold more
than 20 million albums world-wide; his dozen official releases include
“Play” (1999), “18” (2002) and “Innocents” (2013). It wasn’t an easy
path. He grew up poor in an affluent Connecticut suburb and battled
alcoholism for almost two decades.
... Moby was drinking heavily by the late 1980s, before becoming sober for a few years and then starting to drink again in 1995.
