unsober

“I’ve never seen a sober English football fan in my life,” said a 36-year-old fan named Simon, who declined to give his last name, perhaps because he was a little unsober himself.

It was the scene of Private Eye lunches and the base, as it were, of the notoriously unsober Spectator columnist Jeffrey Bernard.

“He certainly did get himself out of the ambulance, but our position is that he was so grossly unsober, he had so much alcohol in his system, that the condition he was in rendered him the equivalent of helpless, absolutely helpless to make informed decisions about his own safety.”

I was interested in the story of a recovering addict in the midst of a notoriously unsober scene.

One reason given was that the workers were too drunken, helped as they were to unsober habits by the facilities for smuggling in Holland's gin.