Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US/Aus., also blue as a razor, blue drunk) drunk; thus blue willies, delirium tremens [appears in the early 19C US, lasts until the mid-century then re-emerges in Australia by the early 20C].

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Blue as a Razor. perhaps blue as Azure.
1818		M.L. Weems Drunkard’s Looking Glass (1929) 72: Coming home one night, quite blue, from a grog shop, he got his neck snapped short by a fall into his own saw pit.
1821		R. Waln Hermit in America on Visit to Phila. 2nd series 23: ‘I warrant the bang-ups have crooked their elbows’ quoth Tom [...] ‘blue as razors no doubt’. [Ibid.] 132: Drink a bumper all round—get a little blue.
1829		N.-Y. Eve. Post 8 Jan. 2/4–5: Well then, says I, ‘Tom,’ says I, ‘had’nt [sic] we better be cutting stick and heading home?’ for we were partly blue.
1833		A. Greene Life and Adventures of Dr Dodimus Duckworth II 176: He was seldom downright drunk; but was often [...] confounded blue.
1844		J.C. Neal Peter Ploddy and Other Oddities 147: You’d better jine the teetotallers to-morrow [...] any man that acts so queer, must be blue.
1851		‘The Amateur Ticket-Vender’ in T.A. Burke Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 105: He sold out to some upper-country flatboatmen who were pretty blue.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 136: I’ve had my breeches died blue, and I’ve got a blue bucket, and I very often feel blue, and about twice in a while I go to the doggery and git blue.
1882		comic song in Ware (1909) 63/1: Every night does my husband come home blue, blind, stiff, stark, staring drunk, till he can’t see a hole in a forty foot ladder, sure.
1898		J.D. Brayshaw Slum Silhouettes 15: Dicky [...] had seen him that same night being chucked out of ‘The Green Man’ when he was ‘blue, blind, and paralytic’.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 11/5: he was blue, blind, speechless, paralytic drunk.
1929		D. Parker ‘Big Blonde’ Penguin Dorothy Parker (1982) 193: When you were blue you got the howling horrors.
1937		H. Drake-Brockman Blister Act I: My dear, when you start getting the blue willies (he pours a second drink with careful precision) you just take my tip and keep on spotting.
1940		Logan Dly News (OH) 26 Dec. 4/5: ‘You’re getting the blue willies. That’s what’s the matter with you.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 166: A man who is drunk is said to be blithered, blue, on his ear [...] and drunk as a piss ant.
1981		A. Weller Day of the Dog 48: I’ll give ya some boya, so’s ya can get blue drunk and forget.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

2. (S.Afr.) under the influence of marijuana.

1949		H.C. Bosman Cold Stone Jug (1981) II 30: ‘Blue’ was the most usual way of talking about being under the spell of dagga. [...] ‘When I is blue like what I is now, then I says you can maar keep me locked up in the old boob as long as you blerrie well like.’.
c.1949		H.C. Bosman Willemsdorp (1981) I 510: Josias said he was peddling ‘Bloo-drimmes’. [...] Not anybody would be able to interpret that, just straight off, as ‘blue-dreams’.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 102: The gangsters describe each other as being ‘blue’ when under the influence of dagga. [Ibid.] 102: Whenever they became low-spirited [...] they endeavoured to jerk themselves out of it by ‘getting high’ or by ‘getting blue’.