Two stories I heard on the radio while traveling this week gelled into this post tonight. The first was about a contest being held by brewer Guinness with first prize a reserved seat aboard a Virgin Galactic space liner. No astronaut training here; it’s basically drink beer, win a trip to space. The second was this story about a cross country US Airways flight that made an emergency landing because of a naked, belligerent passenger. Not surprisingly, police say the man had been drinking at the departure airport bar among other things.

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It wasn’t long before I was thinking we would too soon be hearing about naked drunks in space- watch out for that vacuum, it’s harsh!

The drunk standard is for men to strip and women to cry, yes it sometimes works in reverse but it’s a good rule of thumb. So we get scary ugly and sobbing insanity. It only gets worse when they get angry- about what who knows and it’s usually very, very, angry. Now put all this happening in an aluminum tube 35,000 feet above the ground and it gets very scary, I would imagine it would be absolutely nightmarish at 68 miles above the Earth.

It’s a holiday weekend folks, stay safe and by all means stay sober! (keep your clothes on guys)

Snakes on a plane may be a recipe for a horror movie, but two guys swilling alcohol like pigs and getting sick on a flight from Mexico in the middle of the swine flu scare turned into a real nightmare.

Two men who had too much to drink caused 117 passengers on a flight from Mexico to Maryland to wait on board after landing while health authorities checked the two for symptoms of swine flu, officials said Tuesday. ~ Fox News

How can a drunk ruin your day?  Let me count the ways, but I am sure that being quarantined for a couple of hours in an aluminum tube with a hundred other passengers and a possible deadly virus ranks in the the top ten of this list.

Drinking and driving, sleeping pills and alcohol, anything and methadone, even a storm trooper and Elvis- the list of ill-advised mixes that make for a relative topic of discussion on TDA is endless. The subject today however involves drunks and planes, I’m not talking pilots or even alcoholics for that matter- just drunk people in the passenger cabin of a commercial airliner.

Drunks on planes make the headlines everyday; they get naked, make threats, and even try to open the doors midflight. The ones I would like to address though never make the news, yet they could arguably be the most distressing and disturbing group you have ever had the displeasure of sharing a fuselage with. The prototypical example of the group is a middle age or higher male that is overweight. He drinks heavily and consequently sleeps heavy… and snores. Not just a slight wheeze or occasional snort, but a more like roar from an afterburning jet engine fueled by straight alcohol. Even with earplugs, you can hear it through your bones.

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Many people drink to ease their fear of flying, but not our snorer. He drinks in excess for the specific purpose of passing out in a deep sleep, sort of a suspended animation for the long trip. Of course sleep is the last thing available for the rest of the three hundred poor saps stuck at thirty thousand feet with this guy running a saw mill in his skull. The alcohol not only acts as a sedative, it also acts as a muscle relaxant that actually amplifies the snoring process.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to experience this torture more than once. In many cases, the flight attendants repeatedly wake the drunken guy only for him to nod off seconds later with the same deafening results. Obviously I’m not the only one disturbed by this event, travel columnist Jill Schensul calls it “socially disruptive sleeping” but doesn’t address the alcohol related escalation. I am all for tolerance, but I have to agree with Jill on this one- a phantom nudge or “accidental” jostling is in order when considering the close quarter circumstances of a flight.

Regardless of the circumstances, usually the only people that can stand being around a drunk are other drunks. This rule is never truer than in a crowded airliner; drunks and planes, a very disturbing mix (even when they are comatose)!

Duct tape. We called it 100 mph tape back when I was in the military and it was an invaluable tool for quick repairs while out in the field. Dave Barry calls it one of the six fundamental forces of the universe, “with the other five being gravity, magnetism whining, remote control, and the force that pulls dogs toward the groins of strangers.”

Probably one of the most innovative uses for this all purpose fix-it/stick-it was performed by the astronauts of Apollo 13 who used it to fabricate an ad hoc life support system while 200,000 miles from the Earth.

TDA researcher Anna Z found us another story of duct tape aeronautical engineering involving a drunken passenger on a United Airlines flight from Puerto Rica to Chicago.

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Passenger Maria Esther Castillo of Oswego, N.Y. was charged this week with resisting arrest and interfering with flight operations. Castillo had apparently been drinking both at the airport and on the plane before her behavior became so unmanageable that she had to be duct taped her seat.

Castillo, 45, struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday’s flight, FBI Special Agent Peter Carricato said in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. She also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person’s hair, the complaint stated. ~ SunTimes

She fell on the head of a blind person? She must have really gone berserk. Forget the snakes; drunks on planes are far more upsetting and unfortunately very commonplace. One would think that the almost daily occurrence of drunks storming the cockpit, becoming verbally abusive, stripping, and trying to open the door at 30,000 feet that airlines would ban alcohol on flights, but it will not happen. It’s just another example of how casually our culture accepts the constant stream of problems and tragedies in order to continue our love affair with alcohol.

By the way, my pet peeve when it comes to drunks on a plane: The passed out fat guy snore. Makes me want to shove a bag of peanuts up their nose!

My work requires fairly extensive travel. Even though I prefer driving because of the freedom and flexibility it allows in my schedule, sometimes the distances and timelines can only be satisfied by air travel. So I usually find myself flying three or four times a month disguised as a mild mannered businessman.

There was the time I got to grill the doctor of infectious diseases about ailments directly related to substance abuse. Then there was the time I got to talk to a psychiatrist specializing in sleep disorders about how people new to sobriety can learn how to sleep again without any chemical lullabies.

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Of course there have been times when I have been asked to do most of the talking, sharing my experiences as an alcoholic and in recovery like the time I spent with the newly sober white-knuckled recovering heroin addict. With this last incident, I even noted that is seemed as if I was fated (an addiction magnet) to find worthy recovery blog content with every flight.

Wrong. This week on a trip to the Midwest I sat down next to a rather unique dressed older gentleman. Immediately getting a bad vibe, I quickly decided this would be one of the flight legs spent with my nose in a book as much as possible. My perverted sense of curiosity got the best of me though and I payed for it by having to listen to this guy explain to me for over an hour about going to AA meetings… even though he was adamant about the fact that he has never drank a drop in his life!

If you have ever listened to an addict or an alcoholic who is nearing rock bottom try to convince themself that all is well by trying to convince others of the same, them you know what I am talking about. The lies are painfully obvious, and they were making me extremely uncomfortable.

Oops, stuck for the duration.

Perhaps if in a less public place, one preferably with multiple exits on the ground floor, I would have asked a few penetrating questions just to see the reaction. Five miles high, buckled in next to what can be politely described as an unstable entity, I sanely opted for discretion, tuning out, and nodding at the appropriate times hoping all remained calm.

Note to self: Tone down the curiosity for sea level conversations