This paper investigates the simple or complex lexical items of colloquial language related to drinking and being drunk, from a contrastive point of view (Spanish and French), in an organised and parallel onomasiological presentation. The article includes a bilingual glossary, and considers that the contrastive analysis of metaphors and metonymies in the drinking slang can lead to interesting conclusions on the psychology and the mood of the drinker and, therefore, on his/her linguistic response to them. Furthermore, this article intends to help the translator to achieve a greater knowledge of the topologic divergences and similarities, thus facilitating his/her choice of different nuances in the translation.