Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Adrian (Quist) adj.

(Aus.) drunk.

1970		Galton & Simpson ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ Steptoe and Son [TV script] One night when he come home a bit Adrian Quist, she smashed him across the scone with a quart jar.
1978		Australian 31 May 9: I’m on the turps again — got Adrian Quist something terrible the other night [GAW4].
1994		A. Buzo Kiwese 101: Not to be confused with the Oz rhyming slang ‘I’m feeling a bit Adrian Quist’, ie pissed.
2000		M. Quinion World Wide Words 9 Dec. 🌐 Adrian is a well-known bit of Australian slang, dating from the 1970s. I’d always associated it with being drunk; [...] The word is supposed to originate in the name of the Australian tennis player Adrian Quist, and is a bit of typical Aussie rhyming slang: Quist = pissed, that is, drunk.
2000		(ref. to 1940s) Sydney Morning Herald (Aus.) 🌐 We might have been Quist around the 1940s – after Adrian Quist and John Bromwich won Australia’s first Davis Cup – but now we’re more likely to be blind, plastered or para.