Lady Drunk

Lily: I need a drink.
Olive: You're holding a drink.
Lily: [dumps out drink] I need a stronger one.

— Pushing Daisies

The Lady Drunk is that female Stock Character who's a middle-aged alcoholic, and usually has either a bitter, misanthropic personality or is the all-too-grown-up version of the Hard-Drinking Party Girl. She tends to have a certain amount of class or status, having likely started out as an upper-crust Grande Dame. Often drinks from a martini glass and may be used as a stock member of a Big, Screwed-Up Family. In her day, she was probably quite attractive and rather promiscuous.

The character type may have originated with the idea that once the lady who Really Gets Around loses her looks, she starts drinking as compensation.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Sayoko from Ah! My Goddess is younger than typical for this trope, but she's much too bitter to be a Hard-Drinking Party Girl.
• Rika Furude from Higurashi: When They Cry definitely counts. This is horribly Squickish being that she's a prepubescent child. Sort of.
• In Laid-Back Camp, Toba-sensei is nicknamed "Lady Chug" at the local package store since she comes in and buys a six-pack every single day after work. Though she's a bit more emotional while drunk, she's perfectly pleasant otherwise, and serves as the sponsor for the Outdoors Activities Club.
• Eva Heinemann from Monster is a bitter, middle-aged drunk who has become embittered with life after her break-up with Tenma. She's been married and divorced three times, and would sleep with anyone willing, mostly to spite her former fiancee.
• Sumeragi Lee Noriega from Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is a genius tactician whose mistake led to many deaths years ago and she still can't get over it, drowning her sorrows in wine.
• Tsunade from Naruto. The first time we meet her she spends her time in and out of casinos and bars, but even as Hokage she likes her sake.
• Kokoro from One Piece. She practically speaks like she's drunk even when she's sober. She probably started drinking, because Tom (her boss) was imprisoned and died in jail and Franky/Cutty Flam, her quasi-adoptive son, was seemingly killed when he tried to stop the sea-train, that was transporting Tom to jail.
• Reiko from Sensual Phrase. Who pretty much drank herself to death, leaving her son Sakuya in the care of her old boss.
• Margery Daw from Shakugan no Shana is definitely one. When she's not helping fight the Monster of the Week, she's passed out drunk on the couch or fighting the Monster of the Week while drunk.
• Kurokawa-sensei from Strawberry 100%, Manaka's math teacher and advisor to the Film Club. Beautiful, busty, and a frequent drinker.
• In Walkin Butterfly, Michiko's agent Ryo Tago is a former model and an alcoholic in her 40s.
• Yuri!!! on Ice: Minako is a noted drunkard and gets drunk on a few occasions in the series, and is actually older thank Yuuri's mother.
• YuYu Hakusho: Yusuke's mother is young for this trope, but spends a significant amount of her on-page time drinking.

Fan Works

• Applejack in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Shadow Snark
  Shadow Snark: I've seen you two times, both times you were completely smashed.
• Star Sparkle in Divided Rainbow.
• Berry Punch in just about every My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic. This is a takeoff of how she was supposed to be a playful drunk in the canon, but the censors wouldn't allow it.
• We have Yukari from Gensokyo 20XXV, who, according to chapter 59, seems to be a drinker, albeit moderately or as close to moderately as it can get, seeing as she takes a few sleeping pills with two shots of liquor, usually before bed. This even earned her a nickname, "Three Shots and Sleeping Pills".

Films — Live-Action

• Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Middle-aged mother, bitter about her failed life and unhappy marriage and disappointments.
• Lorraine McFly in the first two Back to the Future films:
  • In Part I, during the original timeline (before Marty ever goes back to 1955). Alcohol seems to be her way of coping with her disappointing lower-class life with a failure of a husband, even if she does love him.
  • In Part II, during the 1985-A scenes (where she's married to Biff-A). Alcohol seems to be her way of coping with the horror of being married to Biff.
    • In a bit of Fridge Brilliance, she's shown sneaking a drink on prom night in 1955.
• Elinore Schwab in OC And Stiggs is a comic exaggeration of this and pretty much every other drunk trope, hiding her booze all over the house and taking Quick Nips from, among other things, a set of dummy binoculars.
• The wife of team owner Larry Dennit Jr., Mrs. Dennit, in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is never seen without a plastic cup of alcohol in her hand. It's implied that the she can't stand racing and drinks to pass the time. Even when she knows Dennit Racing is entertaining sponsors, she still gets horribly drunk and tries to flirt with a company executive twice her age.
• Bella, Nancy's long-lost biological mother in Min and Bill, is a particularly mean, hateful example of this trope. Constantly drunk, and very bitter that her daughter is going to get married to a rich man and enjoy the nice life that her jealous mother never had.
• Helen from The Blue Dahlia is an angry, bitter drunk. She reveals to Johnny that their dead son didn't die from diptheria, like she said — the boy died when Helen crashed the car while driving drunk.
• Mrs. Kebabian in America America. Former Trophy Wife now trapped in a loveless marriage to a businessman who married her when she was eighteen. Routinely gets drunk in the daytime—her maid cuts her off at one point, and her husband notes an empty wine bottle in the room. Falls in lust with Stavros, tells him through drunken tears about how she wasted the best years of her life in her marriage and now mourns her lost youth. Eventually gives Stavros $50 (not a bad stake in 1890s America) to help him get settled.
• Mrs. Oates, the household cook in The Spiral Staircase. She's quite upset when her husband takes away the brandy, and then later deliberately drops a candle in the basement so Albert won't see her steal another bottle of brandy. When Helen needs help at the climax, as she is being hunted by a Serial Killer, Mrs. Oates is passed out drunk in the kitchen and Helen can't rouse her.
• Joyce in Dangerous. A series of professional and personal disasters have convinced everyone, including Joyce herself, that she is a "jinx", ruining her career as a stage actress. In her first scene, she's drunk in a bar, ridiculing poor Don for being a fan of hers back in the day, slurring her way through Romeo and Juliet dialogue until she passes out. The next morning, before breakfast, she's smashing open Don's locked liquor cabinet so she can get more alcohol.
• Ziegfeld Girl: Sheila's grief and bitterness after she dumps true love Gil for life as The Mistress to a rich man leads her to drink, and it gets much worse after the rich man dumps her and she's left with nothing.
• Stoker has India's mother Evelyn, who spends much of the film with a glass of wine in hand. She's bitter and resentful towards her daughter, and reeling from the recent loss of her husband. (Not helping matters is that said husband was said daughter's preferred parent.) Under the affections of Charlie, however, Evelyn begins to warm up a bit, drinking a bit less and smiling a bit more.. Until she finds out Charlie's true intentions, anyway. Then things basically go to hell again.
• Killers: Jen's mom drinks at every opportunity. She's middle-aged, kind of ditzy, and likely a grown Hard-Drinking Party Girl.
• In Coroner Creek, Younger Miles' wife Abbie is an alcoholic, like her father The Sheriff. Younger spends a lot of time and money trying to keep this secret from the town.
• Gervaise: Gervaise works hard to raise herself out of poverty and start her own business (a laundry), only for her abusive alcoholic husband, her lazy leech of a former lover, and a jealous neighbor, combine to destroy everything and ruin her business. The last scene shows her as a dirty, disheveled drunk in a bar, unable even to respond when her little daughter comes in.
• Doctor... Series:
  • Doctor at Sea: Jill has too much of Easter's "fire alarm" at the ship's dance and ends up completely trashed.
  • Doctor in Love: Dawn and Leonora have too much gin to drink when Drs. Hare and Burke come over to their hut, and the pair are completely trashed when Professor MacRitchie comes to check on them.
• On the Buses films:
  • Mutiny on the Buses: While her husband Arthur gets friendly with Nymphy Norah, Olive and Mrs. Butler get very drunk to help Olive get over her sadness.
  • In Holiday on the Buses, Bert's departed wife Gladys was mentioned to have been quite fond of gin.
• It's a Wonderful Knife (2023): In the alternate timeline, Winnie's mom's devolved into one, constantly drinking around the house with a cold, uncaring personality as she cheats quite openly on her husband to cope after their son was murdered.
• Please Turn Over: In Naked Revolt, Aunt Una gets terribly drunk in Dr. Gay's office and spills gin on herself.
• Cook from No Kidding is almost always in a state of intoxication:
  Suleiman: What's the matter with Cook, Matron?
  Matron: Oh, er, sh-she's ill.
  Dandy Big: "Ill"? Are you kiddin'? She's plastered!

Literature

• Harry Potter:
  • Winky the house-elf gets drunk on butterbeer out of depression due to being disowned by her master in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (It has no effects on humans but is strong for elves.)
  • Professor Trelawney, the Divination teacher, also has a bit of a drinking problem (especially when she's upset), to the point that her profile on Pottermore lists 'sherry' as one of her hobbies. It starts rearing its head after she's fired in Order of the Phoenix and in Half-Blood Prince Harry runs into her while she's trying to hide some sherry in the Room of Requirement.
• Discworld:
  • Nanny Ogg is very fond of a drink, and another drink, and a third (make it a double, please). She's generally a very cheerful person but otherwise fits.
  • In The Art of Discworld, Pratchett mentions that they actually do still turn out Nanny Oggs in Britain. You can generally find them enjoying a pint of the local bitter and having a good time all 'round.
  • Madame Sharn, the dwarfish fashion designer from Unseen Academicals has some elements of this character type.
• The Malloreon: A certain noblewoman is described as a 'lush'. She lives in the deep country and has nothing else to do but drink. Beldin, an otherwise irascible person, treats her with uncharacteristic sympathy. The epilogue reveals that Beldin talked Zakath into setting her up in the Mallorean capital... and ordering her jackass husband to stay the hell away on threat of his life. She's described as causing minor scandal, but being much happier.
• In the Doctor Who Expanded Universe Alternate Reality Episode The Blue Angel, the Doctor's Beloved Smother is one of these and refuses to believe that he never drinks... while discussing his psychiatric medications with him. (Antipsychotics are a very good reason not to drink if you'd rather not die.) She's also a mermaid and has apparently found some way around the Mermaid Problem.
• Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind starts drinking surreptitiously after living through the Civil War.
• Madelene Burden in The Woman And The Ape is a pretty severe example. She is a society wife with virtually nothing to do, who takes a test-tube of medical spirits with her whenever she leaves the house. About halfway through the book, she has a Heroic BSoD and decides to give up drinking, which she carries through with no apparent ill effects.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Cersei has a flagon of wine often at hand after the deaths of Joffrey and Tywin.
• Dolly Pickles from Cloudstreet is drunk when she's introduced. She's such an alcoholic that when she tries to quit, she gets a blinding headache and breaks her leg falling down the stairs trying to get to the kitchen(/alcohol cupboard).
• Simona Ahrnstedt gives us Nora Gripklo in her novel "De skandalösa", who hardly is old, but otherwise fits this trope. She has turned to alcohol after her husband died prematurely.
• Maik's mother in Why We Took the Car has a drinking problem.
• In The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Doña Maria is a lonely old widow with a My Beloved Smother relationship with her daughter Clara. After Clara leaves her, sailing off to Spain with her new husband, Doña Maria is broken-hearted. She starts drinking constantly. She makes a habit of drying up for a week in order to prepare herself to write the monthly letter to her daughter, then drinks herself into oblivion for three weeks after the letter is sent.
• Toras Redone, from the Kharkanas Trilogy. Though she is a commander in the Hust Legion, she is also a married woman from the nobility and used to be very beautiful. Kellaras notes how she still is beautiful, but in a dissolute way, due to the amount of alcohol she consumes.
• Auntie Mame's eponymous heroine is fond of a martini...or two...or more. So is her best friend, Vera Charles.
• The Sentence Is Death: Davina Richardson, who has never gotten over the loss of her husband 12 years ago in a tragic accident, talks about how lonely she is, and is always drinking whenever Hawthorne and Anthony come over.
• Murder Is My Business: Carmela Towne, who never recovered emotionally from her father stopping her marriage to Lance Bayliss ten years ago. Now she's haggard, wearing too much makeup, and bitter about how her life has turned out. She's drunk when she first meets Michael Shayne, a private detective and the book's protagonist. Later, when she tries to seduce him, she drinks so much liquor that she passes out.
  She was the embodiment of a woman who for a long time had made a habit of drinking too much, and sleeping and eating too little.

Live Action TV

• Dr. Mary Albright of 3rd Rock from the Sun has some elements of this. Her mother, played by Elaine Stritch (in a neat little Casting Gag: see Theatre below), is a bit closer to the "true" version.
  • In the episode "Dick'll Take Manhattan", the Solomons visit an alternate dimension where Mary is a lonely, burnt-out lounge singer and fits this trope like a glove.
• Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development.
  Lucille: Get me a vodka rocks.
  Michael: Mom, it's breakfast.
  Lucille: And a piece of toast.
  • Lindsay, a former Hard-Drinking Party Girl, has occasional shades of this, usually when going on lunch or dinner dates with her mother (and with Lucille's constant sniping usually being the thing that drives her to drink).
  • Lindsay is convinced vodka can go bad like milk because apparently that's how Lucille explained her drinking to her when she was a child.
• Ellen Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. Alcoholic, promiscuous, encourages her husband's alcoholism, collaborates with the Cylons, is one herself...
  • It was somewhat amusing to note that even after her husband murders her and she gets resurrected by the Cylons with her full memories restored, Ellen Tigh remains the exact same psychotic, poisonous bitch. The way it was played, it almost seemed as if she knew all along.
• Ilsa of Danger 5. At one point, faced with death by Nazi Dinosaur, she mutters (In Russian) "I always thought I'd die of Alcohol Poisoning." She's pretty much permanently drunk, for comedy purposes.
• Game of Thrones: Cersei Lannister's trusty goblet is never far from her hand.
• Just Shoot Me!. Nina loves her alcohol, along with assorted pills (and, in the past, hard drugs). She's also way past her prime (though denying it), with all this probably a way to cope.
• Meredith Palmer from The Office (US) is essentially a working-class variant on this. Michael tried to put her in rehab, and she said no no no!
• Marsha, the landlady from Spaced, is a former groupie who now spends her time drinking wine and arguing with her daughter.
• Karen Walker from Will & Grace. Depending on if she's drunk or on pills, she can be this or happy-go-lucky.
• Edwina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous, though if you think she's bad, Patsy tops this by being worse than her.
• Olivia in Sunset Beach was a former trophy wife turned alcoholic. Her husband berated her daily about it, but never took any steps to alleviate the pain she assuaged with vodka.
• Sam's mom in Without a Trace, although she's more of a party girl who never grew up, much to her daughters' detriment.
• Sue Ellen Ewing of Dallas, who seems to be trying to bring on a case of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome with how soused she gets while pregnant.
• Adelle DeWitt of Dollhouse fits this pretty well, though on the younger side and provoked by the pressures of a wavering moral compass.
• All the women in Cougartown like to drink, but Barb is the closest to this trope, with Jules a close second.
• Brandy of Noah's Arc is a bit younger than the typical Lady Drunk, but still fits the trope otherwise (her position of power somewhat puts her in an "older" role). Her jaded and sarcastic personality also fits the trope.
• Kay Chancellor of The Young and the Restless is portrayed as the show's grand dame, admired and respected by most of the show's other characters, but also a recovering alcoholic, who's committed some heinous acts while drunk, including killing her second husband.
• Jordan and her friends on Scrubs, this is made especially obvious after Jordan's brother Ben dies. One of them even specifies that she gets the shakes if she goes too long without getting laid or having a drink.
• Lady Patience Hardacre in Brass (a comedy version, but both very drunk and still capable of getting men into bed when she tries).
• JAG: In the episode "War Cries", Ambassador Bartlett discusses Embassy security and the implications of a recent shooting incident (a Marine sentry shot and killed a young boy that was climbing the Embassy walls, who he claims shot at him first) while drinking Scotch.
• Joan Callamezzo from Parks and Recreation. She once had an interview planned with Ron, coming in extremely hungover from a week-long booze cruise, stating that "the show will go on." She started the show by declaring "the show will not go on", and collapsing- leaving Ron to take viewer's calls. She also underwent Sanity Slippage in the final season during a three-year Time Skip.
• Good Girls Revolt has Bea, who likes her bourbon (and her martinis). When she has a glass with Wick and Finn, they are visibly impressed that she drains it in two gulps while they take smaller sips.
• Political Animals: Elaine's mom spends most of her time with a drink in her hand while she dishes out cutting commentary and snarky insight on the lives of her family and anyone else to cross her path.
• On Grace and Frankie, Grace is a 70-year-old very attractive retired cosmetics executive. She almost always has an alcoholic beverage on hand and has done such things as filling a thermos with Bloody Mary when housemate Frankie drags her on a short road trip.
• Margaret of The Cool Kids turns 65 in the second episode. Even into her senior years, she's still a rebellious spirit. Margaret is more jaded and sarcastic than outright bitter.
• Moira Rose of Schitt's Creek likes to tell stories from her long history as a Hard-Drinking Party Girl and still enjoys booze, pills, and pot. She's fairly high functioning, in part thanks to her previous wealth, but she still manages to get drunk or stoned now and again because Catherine O'Hara is so magnificent at playing intoxicated.
• Taken: In "High Hopes", Anne Crawford has become an alcoholic as a result of her miserable life with her cold, neglectful, and emotionally abusive husband Owen. The seeds of her alcoholism were sown in "Jacob and Jesse" when Owen refused to allow her to leave him. Anne regularly takes pills when she drinks, risking her health and causing her behavior to become even more erratic. Owen threatens to have her sent to a sanatorium if she does not stop embarrassing him. She later tells their sons Eric and Sam that he is involved with the US government's UFO project and bitterly mentions that he stole the job from her late father Colonel Thomas Campbell. Things come to a head when she figures out the combination to his safe and finds the artifact that Sue discovered at the Roswell crash site in 1947 (as seen in "Beyond the Sky"). Owen murders her in order to keep its existence a secret, making it look as if Major Howard Bowen killed her and then committed suicide.
• The Nanny: C.C. Babcock frequently suffers from alcoholism, implied to be due to her romantic troubles.
  C.C.: Hey, kids, you know when I'm down in the dumps, what cheers me up?
  Fran: A fifth of scotch and a fresh pack of batteries?
• Played for laughs in The IT Crowd, when Moss is paired up with one of Jen's friends at a dinner party she's holding. They only spend about two hours in each other's company but seem to evolve through an increasingly bitter twenty-year marriage by way of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? during that time, leading to everyone acting as if the woman — who gets progressively tipsy during the evening — is becoming one of these.
  Moss: You're embarrassing yourself!
  Margaret: Oh, look at him! He's a delicate flower!
  Moss: You are drunk!
  Margaret: Well, if you paid a little more attention to me!
  Moss: Oh, tell us, Margaret, tell us all! How could we possibly pay more attention to you?!
  Margaret: You've changed. You're not the same man I liked when I came into the party.
  Moss: [Bitterly] We've all changed, Margaret. We all have. [Angrily smokes a cigarette]
• Yellowstone: Beth Dutton is a nihilistic and misanthropic corporate raider who drinks heavily to numb herself from her trauma and depression. Various characters criticize her for it, but she's an entirely functional drunk. Soon, however, her father tells her that he needs her clear-headed to survive the dangers the family faces. Thereafter, she frequently passes on opportunities to drink, though she still indulges on occasion.
• Noughts & Crosses: Jasmine is an upper-class woman (her husband being a government minister) who's an obvious alcoholic as well, to the concern of her family. She seems very unhappy with her marriage and life overall, drowning her sorrows with alcohol. Eventually she's hospitalized and stops drinking.
• The Queen's Gambit: Implied to be par for the course for women in the 1960s. Beth's mother drinks heavily to cope with her depression, a habit that young Beth picks up as well. When Beth runs into a former Alpha Bitch from school, she discovers that the woman finds herself a little stunned to already be married with a child. Whenever Beth sees her in town, she's got a large bag of fresh liquor.
• Ugly Betty: Claire Meade is an alcoholic whose first appearance was in a rehab center. She alternates between sobering up and falling off the wagon throughout the series.
• Gotham Knights (2023): Stephanie's mother turns out to be an alcoholic (and pain medication addict) who's quite bitter about her life, lamenting her sufferings.

Professional Wrestling

• Sweet Saraya acted like a violent lunatic her entire SHIMMER run until she went out with Mayumi Ozaki for a drink. It was further established after SoCal Val's hostile takeover of Valkyrie in SHINE. Sweet Saraya, being the "unofficial" hitwoman of the group, announced she was using her new "raise" to get pissed and proceeded to become so indulged in drinking she neglected her thrall, Su Yung.

Theater

• The Women has the Countess de Lage, who tends to get wistful about "l'amour" over drinks after having divorced four husbands. "Get me a bromide — and put some gin in it!"
• Joanne (originally played by Elaine Stritch) from Company, especially in her song "The Ladies Who Lunch."
  Joanne: What was that clock chime?
  Larry: Five-o'-clock.
  Joanne: Thank God, cocktail hour!
• The title character in The Drowsy Chaperone. She even gets a rousing Diva Song about alcoholism, "As We Stumble Along."
• Madame Dilly in On the Town is a cynical old harridan who can't give a singing lesson without a bottle of whiskey to take a Quick Nip from.
• Mary's mother in Vanities, whose funeral at the end of the musical brings the three friends back together. Also, Joanne in the third act, where her hatred towards Mary surfaces during a champagne binge.
• Marthy from Anna Christie is an alcoholic in late middle age, sad and bitter, with a "thick red nose" and "bloodshot blue eyes". But she rises to the occasion when her companion Chris's long-lost daughter Anna shows up at the bar.
• State of the Union has the Sazerac-swilling Mrs. Alexander. Except for her, nobody is supposed to have too much to drink, but Hilarity Ensues when Mary decides to have some of what she's having. She's more convivial than most examples of this, however.
• The Ladies of the Corridor by Dorothy Parker and Arnaud d'Usseau has Mildred Tynan, who started drinking heavily when she found out her husband was cheating on her. Now a divorcée somewhere in her mid-thirties, she's rarely seen in a good mood without a bottle of whisky. In her highest drunken spirits, she's fond of singing "Anchors Aweigh" off-key and loud enough to disturb the neighbors. She has a long Mirror Monologue in which she talks to her image about how "we used to look nice and we used to be nice."

Video Games

• The Splicer known as Rosebud from BioShock has a drunken slur on her words. Apparently, when her daughter was taken to be made into a Little Sister, she hit the bottle hard.
• Wang Yi in the Dynasty Warriors series has exactly two things on her mind: Revenge against Ma Chao, and getting very, very hammered. Not always in that order.
• Fallout: New Vegas potential companion Rose of Sharon Cassidy, who goes by Cass, is a trader encountered drowning her sorrows after her caravan was massacred. She's pushing forty, is strongly moral but slightly cynical, and traveling with her grants you the Whiskey Rose perk. She can also teach you how to make moonshine out of maize, mutfruit, yeast, and a fission battery if you're really thirsty.
• Hera in God of War III, though it's implied something has been driving her to drink rather it being her normal personality. By the time Kratos makes it up Mount Olympus, she's probably pretty grateful that she's already drunk.
• The first thing Bad Girl does in No More Heroes? Kill a cloned gimp with a baseball bat. The second thing? Open her fridge, revealing it's full of beer, and drain a can in about four seconds. She's only in her early twenties, but her choice of occupation has completely numbed her.
  Bad Girl: So fuckin' thirsty. [chug chug belch] Damn that's smooth. Wanna drink?
  Travis: Thanks, I'll pass.
• One of the possible endings in Princess Maker 2 has your Princess becoming a noble lady drowning her sorrows in drink, thanks to the numerous stresses of being a failed monarch.
• Hagane, the cyborg ninja of Samurai Maiden, is the most mature, maidenly, and sophisticated of the cast, but beneath her beauty, calmness, and grace, is a deeply cynical alcoholic. The game explicitly, literally says she's drinking machine oil, but when she mentions waking up at noon because she was drunk all night, going back to drinking shortly after waking up, and doing all this drinking to cope with the stress of being overworked and underappreciated, it's hard not to see it's just her parallel world's version of ethanol.
• Eleanor Silverberg from Suikoden IV fits this trope very well. She comes from the famous Silverberg family of strategists but is an older woman who lives (mostly) alone on an island where she sits and drinks all day. As an added bonus, she also drugs visitors.
• Touhou Project's oni characters both qualify, true to their mythological sources. Suika Ibuki is a Pintsized Powerhouse physically, but is much older than she looks and can be harshly critical of others. She owns a magical sake gourd which never runs out of booze, and thus has never been seen sober. Yuugi Hoshiguma is a Statuesque Stunner who looks and acts more lady-like but has a similar love of drink. Her treasured artifact is a sake dish that improves the quality of any liquor poured into it; like Suika she carries this into battle with the protagonist, and famously doesn't spill one drop. The tengu are also noted drinkers, though not quite as much as the oni. Aside from them, pretty much all of Gensokyo is noted to be really fond of hitting the sauce now and then, with the occasional exception of Sanae Kochiya.
• Valkyria Chronicles 4: Vincey Fiore is a shocktrooper who turned to drinking due to becoming a Shell-Shocked Veteran thanks to being made Sole Survivor of her special forces unit. She has the Hammered potential which makes her lose all her movement along with other debuffs, making her The Load… that is until you do her squad mission, which unleashes Vincey’s Magikarp Power into one of the most powerful shocktroopers in The Squad. Thus the Gameplay and Story Integration of her averting Functional Addict and then later playing it straight due to Character Development.

Webcomics

Mrs. Beelze: Do you really need to hear anything more, your honor? It's nearly noon and I could use a martini.

Virgil: Mrs. Beelze, you've had one in your hand the entire time.

Mrs. Beelze: It's warm. Move to dismiss.

• Mrs. Pompoms from El Goonish Shive was first seen with a glass in hand and has a very misanthropic attitude.
• Diva's mom in Evil Diva. Though we never see her drunk, and it's played for laughs mostly.
• Edison Lighthouse, one of the main characters in Groovy, Kinda is rarely without a drink in hand. She gets drunk every night and cheerfully confesses that she's never sober enough for a hangover. She does vow that, now she has a boyfriend, she'll stop getting drunk every night in bars and going home with strangers here: Vow and Then.
• Mom Lalonde from Homestuck, as well as her post-Scratch counterpart Roxy.
• Dr. Narbon (Senior) from Narbonic might qualify - you'd need a nuclear explosion to part her from her boxed wine. And even that might not work.
• Madame Mim from Penny Blackfeather is a world-weary, living-in-the-past hedgewitch who strolls through the town with a large bottle of gin.
• Mother Greensworthington from Sore Thumbs is a high-society twit who is never seen without a martini glass in hand.
• May from Wapsi Square is what you get when you combine this trope with Mad Scientist. In fact, the reason the indestructible golems of the setting can get drunk is that she didn't want to have to lay off the drinks after she made herself into one. Currently she acts as like a slightly crazy aunt, with a margarita always in hand.

Web Video

• The Nostalgia Chick is a twenty-seven-year-old Psychopathic Womanchild, but her alcoholic bitterness still fits this trope.
• Rebecca Stone from Demo Reel is even younger (23), but can make Irishmen her bitches in drinking contests.
• In Dimension 20's Fantasy High, Hallariel Seacaster is always seen with a drink in hand.
• Ella Morton (formerly of Rocketboom) in The Elegant Guide to Drinking
• Mrs. Van Buren from The Most Popular Girls in School, so much. Here's proof from Episode 24:
  Doctor: First of all, unless you gave birth to a hammerhead shark, you did not have a 16-month pregnancy. Second, Mrs. Van Buren, how much exactly do you drink?
  Jayna: Well, not much. I mean, I'll have a glass and a half of wine at lunch. Then, nothing like an ice-cold zima when the sun's setting. Zinfandel spritzers while I'm cooking dinner for the girls. Red, not white. Several gin and tonics with my evening meal, which take me straight into dessert and some delicious cherry wine. Then I'll curl up with the latest issue of O Magazine and half a bottle of scotch. Then, a quick shot of whiskey before bed so my dreams are peculiar and nice. Come morning, I can hardly get out of bed without a spicy Bloody Mary—Can you blame me, señor, I like the bite, cha cha! Then a couple of wine coolers, two, three, in the mid-morning for energy, zappo! And what do you know we're back at lunch, and it means wine time in my book.
  Doctor: Good god. In my professional opinion, I would have to say that the growth which you believed to be a two-year-old child growing in your belly, who by the way would be able to talk by now, is nothing more than a tremendous amount of fat.

Western Animation

• Malory from Archer is almost always seen with a drink. In the 3rd season finale, she resorts to drinking isopropyl.
• Linda Belcher from Bob's Burgers, with her love of wine, and her often drunken demeanor. However, from what's implied, she's more a social drinker and, when the oppurtunity presents itself, she goes straight for the wine.
• Cleo's mom from Clone High fits this to a tee. She seems to have been quite the looker when she was young but turned to alcohol when men started losing interest in her as she grew older. She is now dating a blind man and appears drunk in every scene she's in. She also seems to be slightly envious of her adoptive daughter.
  • Her name is, literally, Cleo's Drunk Foster Mom.
• Helga's mother Miriam in Hey Arnold! is all but stated as this or is shown to be as much as a kids' show could allow with her slurry speech, forgetful and tired demeanor, her drinking of "smoothies" (how many smoothies have Tobasco sauce in them?), and one episode mentioning that she lost her license. In a scrapped episode, "The Patakis", she mentions she would be attending AA
• Pickles of The Oblongs is almost never seen without a martini and is a frequent patron of Anita's bar. However, despite her drinking, she's more functional and tends to play the Closer to Earth and Only Sane Man tropes.
• Beth of Rick and Morty is shown to frequently slosh down boxes of wine and one of her daughter's memories is her piss drunk in her bed, accidentally hitting her with a wine bottle. Being that her father is an alcoholic is certainly a factor.
• Stacy Lovell, the creator of the Malibu Stacy dolls in The Simpsons.
  Lisa: I'm sure we can think of something together. Come on!
  Stacy: Not now, I'm... too drunk.
  Lisa: No you're not!
  Stacy: [sips slowly from a martini glass, stares into space and sighs]
  Lisa: Uh... I'll come back tomorrow.
  • Edna Krabappel. "Dinner for one, wine for three…"
  • Also, Dr. Hibbert's wife, Bernice (seen in a previous episode attending an Alc Anon class,) passes out upon hearing that Springfield is to enact a ban on alcohol.
• Mr. Hankey's wife, Autumn, on South Park is perpetually drunk in every scene she's in and always has a martini in her hand. She's also extremely bitter over her marriage and takes every opportunity to flirt with others, or mock her husband's erectile dysfunction.
• Yes-People: One of the characters is a middle-aged housewife who chugs alcohol in the daytime while her husband's at work. She hides it behind a chair when he comes home. Later, when she passes out at the dinner table only to slip and fall out of the chair, she seems to have a moment of clarity.

Real Life

• The Queen Mum, although she was rather mild about it; she had the typical drinking schedule of an early-to-mid-20th-century British aristocrat, which meant at least ten drinks a day—but spaced out over anywhere from eight to twelve hours starting at about noon and ending between 8:00 and midnight (although to be fair in the other direction, one of those drinks was a martini, drunk with her port at six, and reportedly a rather stiff one at that). This drinking schedule was abandoned even by most of the aristocracy by the end of her life (she died in 2002), so it seemed rather more excessive than it was. She nevertheless found the characterization amusing, and played off on it frequently; nervous host once blurted out, "I hear you like gin." With perfect poise, she responded, "I hadn't realized I enjoyed that reputation. But if you'd be so kind, make it a double." And when questioned on the fate of a nebuchadnezzar (20 bottles' worth!) of champagne she'd been given: "Oh, I expect I'll just polish it off myself." (She did live and remain fairly active to age 101, despite or even because of her drinking.)
• Julia Child once quipped, "I like cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food." (This is an old joke with restaurant chefs, but while Child might not have been the first to say it, she did say it.)

---