“She’s dry now. Years, probably. But if I know drunks, and I’ve known a few, she could have put me under the table in her day. You too. Sequentially.”
“You make her sound like a boxer.”
“Your really serious drunk approaches booze like it was a barfight. You know, only one of you’s going to be left standing. And the drunk always thinks that’ll be him. Her, in this case.”
“But now she’s hung up her drinking shoes.”
“They all think they’ve done that too.”
— Dead Lions (Mick Herron), Loc. 585–9
Oh yeah, it sounds like it. Especially the barfight part: the drunkards I know are like that.