Society girl on beer snorting coke is mess (7)
I believe the answer is:
debacle
'mess' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are singular nouns, I can't understand how they can define each other.
'society girl on beer snorting coke' is the wordplay.
'society girl' becomes 'deb' (short for debutante in fashionable society).
'on' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (in a down clue, letters appear on others).
'beer' becomes 'ale' (type of beer).
'snorting' means one lot of letters goes inside another (snort can mean to ingest through the nose).
'coke' becomes 'c' (synonyms).
'ale' going around 'c' is 'acle'.
'deb'+'acle'='DEBACLE'
'is' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for debacle that I've seen before include "Utter failure" , "Fiasco, a right mess" , "Pasting" , "Sudden disastrous collapse or defeat" , "A complete collapse or messy failure" .)