This NYT piece at some of the socially objectionable behaviour of the Miles character in Sideways and asks why alcohol abuse is funny in this day and age.

An excerpt:

MILES, the protagonist of the Oscar-nominated film "Sideways," may be all thumbs when it comes to writing and women, but when the subject is wine, he is a poet of pinot noirs and just about every other grape he meets on an alcohol-fueled road trip through the Santa Barbara wine country.

In between swirls, tastings and lyrical wine epiphanies, however, this same merlot-phobic sophisticate is shown stumbling blindly out of a bar, chugging wine straight from the bottle, and, at his most desperate, doing the unimaginable: guzzling from the spit bucket.

Critics for the most part found the movie delightful and described Miles as an oenophile, adult viewers flocked to the clever comedy, and the positive buzz bolstered tourism in the Santa Ynez Valley, where the movie was filmed.

But a much more critical appraisal is coming from alcohol treatment professionals, recovering alcoholics and others who say that while Miles obviously suffers from alcohol addiction, his illness does not seem to register with audiences, just as it is overlooked in the movie. Polly McCall, an alcohol and drug therapist in New York City, said many of her patients are appalled that all they hear people talk about is how funny the characters are in "Sideways," which has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture and best adapted screenplay. Ms. McCall argued that there is a connection between all of Miles's imbibing and his considerable troubles, from finding it hard to get up in the morning to his failed relationships and money problems.

"When you're stealing from your mother, you're an alcoholic," Ms. McCall said, referring to one of the scenes. "There's a societal denial that alcohol is a drug. Just substitute heroin, and you could not have made that movie."