Friend drinking a river or sober? (8)
I believe the answer is:
moderate
'sober?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'friend drinking a river' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'a' is found in the answer.
'river' could be 'oder' (Oder is an example) and 'oder' is present in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
'or' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for moderate that I've seen before include "Dare me to (anag) - act as an arbitrator" , "Chair" , "Read tome (anag) - unexceptional" , "Not extreme - not very good" , "Unextreme" .)