Police escorting the lady when drunk like some spirits (10)
I believe the answer is:
methylated
'like some spirits' is the definition.
(as in methylated spirits)
'police escorting the lady when drunk' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'police' could be 'met' (London Metropolitan Police) and 'met' is located in the answer.
'the' could be 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects) and 't' is located in the answer.
'when' could be 'e' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'e' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'lady' is 'ylad' which is within the left over letters.
A single letter 'h' remains which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
(Other definitions for methylated that I've seen before include "Inflammable (spirits)" , "Type of spirit" .)