I read a great book about a Northwestern pilot that got busted for being a drunk pilot but finally put his life back together and regained his job at Northwest. Never forgot that... What a roll of the dice it is. These guys used to be wasted at 4am, get up at 6am for 0630 flights, and their biggest concern was whether the flight attendants could smell the alcohol steaming off them in the cockpit.
Scary.. A flight attendant once told me that she and the flight crew used to sit in the cockpit and ‘take hits of oxygen’ to help with their hangovers..