Green’s Dictionary of Slang

sozzle v.

[backform. f. sozzled adj.]

1. to drink heavily; thus sozzling n., heavy drinking.

[NZ]N.Z. Truth 20 June 6/2: Did His Spouse Sozzle?
implied in sozzler [below].
A. Baer ‘Bugs’ Baer 14 Nov. [synd. col.] The moderate drinker [...] was a man who never sozzled more than he could carry in two trips.
[US]J.E. Macdonnell Jim Brady 53: The layers of red which years of rum-sozzling had laid on his weather-beaten features.
[US]D. Miles Inside Out 13: Much better to sozzle in the sun.
[US]N.B. Harvey Any Old Dollars, Mister? 59: It went s-sonk! and he spat out the bottle top and started sozzling away.
[SA]C. Hope Separate Development 41: I’m sure your father [...] isn’t nipping down to the local and sozzling away the housekeeping.

2. (US) to walk unsteadily, as if drunk.

[US]‘The Company Cook’ in Lomax & Lomax Amer. Ballads and Folk Songs 552: Well, along in the fall he stopped whistling at all, / Just sozzled around and cried.

In derivatives

sozzler (n.)

a drunkard.

[NZ]N.Z. Truth 30 Jan. 5/5: When one comes to think of it, a sosseller isn’t fit for crime when he’s full of beer.