I actually have a similar circumstance. I was out drinking with my wife and friends on a weekend, away from work. I drank far too much and ended up on one of those pay scooters. Don't remember what happened but fairly quickly I fell off and knocked myself out. My wife and friends called 911 and I ended up in the hospital with mild Traumatic Brain Injury. So obviously I'm dealing with that issue. (I would have reported this to the FAA as its a pretty serious injury and I wasn't going to be able to return to work anytime soon. However, the hospital was a military hospital in my city and someone reported it to the FAA for me.... how nice of them.
) It's been a few months and I am fine now, so the TBI thing is just a waiting game with the FAA at this point and I'm OK with that, I'm on LTD and I have gone back to work at my old airline as a pilot recruiter too.
I had an AME that I got through the HIMS guy at our union. They have collected and submitted all my relevant paperwork. I have a clean driving record, and a clean medical history. I went ahead and went to a HIMS Psychiatrist who said with this incident and my admission that I am occasionally hungover that I qualify for "substance abuse disorder - mild." Which is a DSM term, and apparently not an FAA term. I have been briefed on the whole "dependence" definition in the eyes of the FAA. But in my opinion the shoe doesn't fit here. I drank far too excessively and clearly couldn't handle it, knocking myself out. That's abuse, for sure, but I don't see how it can be construed as dependence.
My question is, will I be forced to go into HIMS, and/or get monitored and/or tested for a few years? Everyone I talk to seems to think yes, but this is a strange circumstance. (By everyone I mean my original HIMS AME who had to retire due to health issues, a new HIMS AME and a guy at AMAS) They always refer back to DUI cases they know of, but this was not a DUI and there was no legal action involved.
The kicker in all of this is that my hospital paperwork shows my BAC on admission and it is (and seems suspiciously) VERY high. I have picked through the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb and can find no blood work to verify this BAC. It's just listed in the general discharge comments (along with multiple instances in which they incorrectly called me a 28 year old male.) I found blood work from the next day with a BAC that's still pretty high, but nothing from my actual admission to verify this seemingly contrived claim.