Green’s Dictionary of Slang

dry adj.²

drunk.

1744		‘Nurse Lovechild’ Tommy Thumb’s Songbook II 41: We are all a dry / With drinking ont; / The Piper kisst / The Fidlers Wife, / And I cant Sleep, / For thinking ont.
1833		‘A Favourite Parody’ in Lummy Chaunter 75: Perhaps like me, she’s glad to take / Whatever she can get, / But if she drinks till she is dry, / She always will be wet.
1876		Wkly Herald (Cleveland, TN) 11 Aug. 4/2: He was seedy and battered and he looked ‘powerful’ dry.
1883		E.J. Milliken Childe Chappie’s Pilgrimage 23: Awakening with a start, / The pillow heaves beneath him; he is ‘dry’.