Being drunk: Slang and idioms of drunkenness.

Alcohol has been around for ages, and many terms have popped up to help explain the state of being drunk. I took a look at some of the most common slang terms for being drunk and see where they sit in the history of the american language.

*Most of the queries were specialized to get the best results for each results. 

Word	GB	COCA	First occurrence (COHA) (with previous literal meaning)
[be] blitzed	1354	20	1978: The man was blitzed completely. He sat. "Get him a glass," Danny told Tiffany.
He [be] wasted	994	17	1999: "told you about what?" Leo said. He was wasted."
[be] tipsy	8073	21	1890: Frank now judged, from the harsh laugh and the excited manner of the intruder, that his visitor was tipsy.
Three sheets to the wind	1232	16	1928: An Irishman about  three sheets to the wind was on his way home.
[be] tanked up	88	4	1921: He wouldn't think o' goin' out 'less he was tanked up, on time er not on time
*he [be] smashed	786	4	2004: ..being under the table at banquets because he was smashed
*he [be] sloshed	58	2	1965: And she hadn't giggled, as he explained to me later, when she stated he was sloshed.
he [be] plastered	64	6	1981: He was plastered again, and determined not to let the party end
He [be] buzzed	77	5	1985: he was astonished to discover he was buzzed.
Hosed	0	0	Wasn't available in any of the corpora, so may be too new.

After studying all these terms, I've noticed that a lot of them are in relation to destruction. Wasted and smashed had multiple uses to mean destruction before it switched to being drunk. Blitzed started in the 1940s, with the German blitzing on London, and transitioned quickly to being drunk. This is interesting to note because while being drunk is increasingly becoming a common past time, we still consider it a destructive act.