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You Might Be A Junkie If... v. Oops, I nodded with the needle still in.

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Papaverium said:
Personally I define a junkie as someone who is addicted the the intravenous use of opiates.. everyone has different definitions though.
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Yes, 100% agreed, the term exclusively means this to me. Someone addicted to opiates smoking/snorting/swallowing might be an addict or a pillhead, but never a junkie. And junkie is only opiates, although I know in Holland, for instance, the term "junkie" can mean a habitual user of any drug. But here, cocaine addicts are coke/crackheads, meth addicts are speed freaks, etc.

There are terms like "adrenaline junkie" but that's just metaphor. A junkie is an i.v. opiate user, and particularly a junkie is an i.v. heroin user. I see it as a sort of exclusive fraternity, although not one I am proud of having been a member of for a number of years.
 
Don't think you can really be that specific everybody has a different meaning for junkie.
There's fast food junkies too.

Just anot her derogatory name for drug users an addicts in my opinion
 
TheRapperGoneBad said:
Don't think you can really be that specific everybody has a different meaning for junkie.
There's fast food junkies too.

Just anot her derogatory name for drug users an addicts in my opinion
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It does, though, after all derive from "junk," old school slang for heroin.

best friends die, you spill a lil dope out of your rig for em then boot up to make it not so depressing.
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All my feels.
 
TheRapperGoneBad said:
Don't think you can really be that specific everybody has a different meaning for junkie.
There's fast food junkies too.
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I think it's important to note that any other kind of junkie has a qualifier (adrenaline junkie), while nobody says drug junkie.

To me, a junkie is someone who has put drugs ahead of themselves (family friends job etc went long ago). AFAIK the term "junkie" comes from people referring to addicts collecting scrap metal around urban areas to sell for cash, but weren't necessarily heroin addicts, though most were. It is also used in a derogatory fashion, but by people inside and outside of the drug world, but inside to refer to someone on the path to down and out but not there yet (i.e. "don't trust him, he's just a fucking junkie"--I think you could imagine that coming from either your shitty aunt or talking about that guy you know that can't be trusted)
 
AFAIK the term "junkie" comes from people referring to addicts collecting scrap metal around urban areas to sell for cash, but weren't necessarily heroin addicts, though most were.
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Nope, it derives from "junk," slang for heroin.
 
Only think of money and despair but every time you shoot you simply don't care.
 
SKL said:
So "junk" for heroin is a back formation from "junkie" from literal junk?
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That's my guess. The article doesn't seem to explain it but that makes sense. People call them junkies because they collect junk, then they probably started calling heroin-junk as code to communicate freely among themselves.
 
I've read about junkies from books written on the early 70's. It's an old term. Not nice, of course but that's how they called drug users in general, including Crack users.
 
It is my belief that the term 'Junkie' is derived from the typical petty theft that many addicts know all too well, in past times some would break into a scrapyard to search for metals to be resold, and the money used for Heroin.

Thus, the term refers specifically to Heroin addiction, though it is frequently used with reference to any and all addictive behaviour.

Its massively negative connotations are rather well documented, to be a Junkie is to be dependent, so in an effort to remove any sting in the term's tail I began using the term freely, as an identifier and term of endearment.

<3
 
All of us addicted to heroin or not, should also care about it. I've noticed many users who don't mind being called a junkie.
So it's a team work if we want to start changing that. We could start right here in BL.
 
I consider myself a junkie even though I have never done heroin, let alone IV. To me a junkie is just someone who is obsessed with drugs in a way that affects their daily behavior. And I don't consider it a derogatory term anymore, it is just a word to describe a person shortly. When thinking about it, junkie sounds better than "addict" or "druggie" to me. Junkie has that kind of lighthearted jokingly-ironic hint to it. So I'm happy to be a junkie.

I'm an alcohol and opioid junkie.
 
I'm glad others see the almost satirical side to the term, and yet I can't help but feel a strong sense of identity in the term.
It doesn't matter who you are, once Heroin has a hold on you it's very difficult to loosen its grip.

OT: You might be a Junkie if you still keep a few IV kits in a bag, in a box, in a suitcase, even though you no longer inject your drugs. You just can't let go.

<3
 
SproutOnSmack said:
I'm glad others see the almost satirical side to the term, and yet I can't help but feel a strong sense of identity in the term.
It doesn't matter who you are, once Heroin has a hold on you it's very difficult to loosen its grip.
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Yup. When I was into to heroin I'd definitely self-identify as junkie, yes, in a satirical way, and of course also, only with junkies. Still would definitely reserve the term for i.v. heroin users though, but that's perhaps being overly specific and having a really pretty twisted sense of pride in terms of being part of the "elite" (lol) of degenerated drug dependency. We'd still use it to criticize stereotypically bad junkie like behaviour on the part of our associates, but we'd usually tack on a little further abuse to it, "that little junkie bitch, she tapped those bags she copped for us." LOL. This was at least in my clique but it's funny how the word was so specific yet versatile. Recalls some other very derogatory words that are appropriated by the persons they refer to.

Oh and if you had a stable job, house, wife, kids, etc. you were never a "junkie" no matter how much of a junkie you were. You were a "righteous dope fiend."

Now I have issues with alcohol, I'd usually call myself an alcoholic, although that term is a bit clinical. I'm a booze hound, a drunk.

OT: You might be a Junkie if you still keep a few IV kits in a bag, in a box, in a suitcase, even though you no longer inject your drugs. You just can't let go.

<3
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I do this.

You might be a junkie if you identify as a junkie and look askance at other drug users using the term junkie if you don't meet your standards of junkiedom.

But conversely, you also might be a junkie if you refer to your junkie associates as "junkie scum" if they steal from you or perhaps won't shout you a bag.

You might be a junkie if you wind up with a career in health care and you can start IV's in places where your colleagues didn't even know there were veins.
 
belligerent drunk said:
SKL said:
You might be a junkie if you wind up with a career in health care and you can start IV's in places where your colleagues didn't even know there were veins.
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That's a fucking given. Made me LOL.
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Early in my training, I was doing an ICU clinical rotation. I was also a raging ("righteous") dope fiend at the time and was the only one with a long sleeve white T shirt pulled up about halfway up my arms, but I digress. Anyway there was a very sick patient who needed an IV. They were trying all the usual spots on the mainline, the hands, etc. and were getting absolutely nowhere. Now basically I'm here to observe and learn, but I pipe up from the back, "can I try?" And I guess they are just like, OK, why not, so I step up, snap on the tourniquet, turn the hand to the side, give the cephalic where it rounds the base of the thumb a good smack and angle the thumb out and slightly downward - all you junkies know the hand position that I'm talking about - and WHAM instant blood flash and a patent line. People were impressed. :D

Edit to add: there's a reason, though, that this site isn't commonly used for hospital i.v.'s, it is easy to dislodge, not a concern in this patient as they weren't going anywhere (sadly in a more expansive sense of the term, too, if I recall correctly), but it was good enough to push some fluids and some drugs. Most medical people might tell you that you can't get a lot of volume in there, but we (junkies) know that vein can take a considerable amount of abuse. Just we (medical people) would probably do well to keep the infusion a little slower.

Just the other day our phlebotomist was having a really hard time on a patient (an IVDU as the case would be), the patient was catatonic so the usual process of asking the IVDU what their best vein was was out of the question, so I suggested to her this same site. She, a phlebotomist of 20 years, said she'd never used it or thought to, again, good results.
 
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SKL said:
Early in my training, I was doing an ICU clinical rotation. I was also a raging ("righteous") dope fiend at the time and was the only one with a long sleeve white T shirt pulled up about halfway up my arms, but I digress. Anyway there was a very sick patient who needed an IV. They were trying all the usual spots on the mainline, the hands, etc. and were getting absolutely nowhere. Now basically I'm here to observe and learn, but I pipe up from the back, "can I try?" And I guess they are just like, OK, why not, so I step up, snap on the tourniquet, turn the hand to the side, give the cephalic where it rounds the base of the thumb a good smack and angle the thumb out and slightly downward - all you junkies know the hand position that I'm talking about - and WHAM instant blood flash and a patent line. People were impressed. :D

Edit to add: there's a reason, though, that this site isn't commonly used for hospital i.v.'s, it is easy to dislodge, not a concern in this patient as they weren't going anywhere (sadly in a more expansive sense of the term, too, if I recall correctly), but it was good enough to push some fluids and some drugs. Most medical people might tell you that you can't get a lot of volume in there, but we (junkies) know that vein can take a considerable amount of abuse. Just we (medical people) would probably do well to keep the infusion a little slower.

Just the other day our phlebotomist was having a really hard time on a patient (an IVDU as the case would be), the patient was catatonic so the usual process of asking the IVDU what their best vein was was out of the question, so I suggested to her this same site. She, a phlebotomist of 20 years, said she'd never used it or thought to, again, good results.
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IV drug use is an art.
 
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