Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) knocked out, incapable; also in fig. use, stunned, shocked; thus paralyzer n., that which has such effects.

1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 July 8/3: This paralyser reminds us of a recently-circulated story of a couple aged respectively 115 and 112 years met by an acquaintance on the wharf at Hobart, en route for Melbourne.
1897		E.W. Townsend Chimmie Fadden 10: Well, after de party de coachman finds his kid paralyzed on de stable floor. Paralyzed see? [Ibid.] 43: Say, I was dead paralyzed when I got t’de box.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 111: PARALYZE: to astonish, to astound.

2. (also handicapped) drunk; thus paralyse v., to make drunk; also intoxicated by drugs.

1882		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 20 May 3/4: McDonald [...] went home drunk [...] [His wife] found him at 4 a.m. lying ‘paralyzed’ in the hallway.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Aug. 13/4: The greater part of the company, who had come as guests, remained as goblins. In a word, British beer had done its work with the Contingent. [...] One of the men (who was quite ‘paralysed’) had a streak of jam over his eye-brow, and another his helmet bedecked with blancmange.
1891		C.H. Hoyt A Trip to Chinatown Act II: Drunker’n a boiled owl! That’s a good one! I’ll just keep it up and get paralyzed.
1900		Sporting Times 2 June 1/3: Fun? Well, I should say so. I paralysed a clergyman!
1904		C. Connors Bowery Life [ebook] I'd give er dinner ter all de mob [...] an’ after I'd got dem all paralyzed wid real wine.
1905		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Off the Mark’ Sporting Times 22 Apr. 1/3: They can’t say to what extent he’s handicapped.
1906		Salt Lake City (UT) 30 Mar. 4/5: He is [...] moony [...] dopey [...] paralyzed.
1914		F. Dumont Darkey Dialect Discourses 32: So Adam he drank more and more of it till he got paralized. I don’t mean from the effects ob the juice.
1921		Ethel Waters ‘At the New Jump Steady Ball’ 🎵 Yet everybody there was pleasure bent; You could get paralyzed for fifteen cents.
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 106: Presently he got paralysed drunk.
1940		E. O’Neill Iceman Cometh Act I: Jees, he was paralysed! [Ibid.] Act II: Jees, mixin’ champagne wid Harry’s redeye will knock yuh paralysed!
a.1948		(con. early 1930s) C. McKay Harlem Glory (1990) 40: It’as my business ef I want to booze tell ahm paralyzed.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 27: ‘Sylvia dead drunk, paralysed, spifflicated, iced to the eye-brows,’ I said harshly.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 811: paralyzed – Intoxicated to a degree but still able to move, even if limited in action and reaction.
1968		J. Colebrook Cross of Lassitude 69: Pa Brun was paralyzed after a drinking bout.
1974		G. Radano Stories Cops Only Tell Each Other 14: ‘The kid was paralyzed drunk. [...] He was speeding. He rams into this car’.
2002		T. Dorsey Triggerfish Twist (2002) 87: ‘How do you feel?’ asked Bernie. Coleman looked slowly around the room. ‘[...] numb, paralyzed, wired, [...].’.