the word junkie

[redrum]

The term "junkie" derives from addicts who stole junk metal to support their habit.
Just thought I would pass on an interesting fact..

 

[Love In Vein]

With all the friends I've had, "junky" has pretty much been used to describe someone who spends most of their money on drugs and their lives aren't in order because they make drugs their top priority.
I was always called a junky long before I ever touched heroin or even got into painkillers. Which initially started several years ago when I was suppossed to pick up some glass for a friend but ended up using it all after I went through my bag before I got to my friend's house.
[ 03 November 2002: Message edited by: Love In Vein ]

 

[fatdave]

The term "junkie" derives from addicts who stole junk metal to support their habit.
Um.... do you have a cite for that? While I don't have a cite, I'm quite sure that the term "junk" comes from users not being able to kick their habit. As in: "I know I should pay my rent, but instead I'll fill my veins with this junk." (Junk meaning trash, crap, garbage, etc... like junk food)

 

[Frunobulax]

i always thought it was strictly related to heroin being called "junk"

 

[fatdave]

i always thought it was strictly related to heroin being called "junk"
That is what I was referring to; sorry if I wasn't clear. "Junkie" comes from heroin being called "junk". Heroin is called "junk" because the users considered it to be junk/trash. However, they continued to use the "junk", so they became "junkies". I highly doubt that it was called junk because they sold junk metal to support their habit.

 

[SeveredPsyche]

From Reviewjournal.com:

The prohibition of recreational drugs after 1914 quickly turned hundreds of thousands of solid citizens into criminals. Hundreds of physicians became jailbirds. Black-market merchants demanded piles of cash for what used to be a few pennies worth of powder from the friendly local apothecary.
"The scope of this change," writes Courtwright, "can be described by the etymology of a single word, 'junkie.' During the early 1920s, a number of New York City addicts supported themselves by picking through industrial dumps for scraps of copper, lead, zinc and iron, which they collected in a wagon and then sold to a dealer. Junkie, in its original sense, literally meant junkman.
From Online Etymology Dictionary:

Junkie "drug addict" is attested from 1923, but junk for "narcotic" is older.

 

[RiseFromRuin]

at Olympic Garden in Vegas this past weekend a stripper walked up to me point blank and asked me if I was a junkie....that was odd to say the least. I think my horrible oral morphine experience that night was given off the ol invisible drug rays to the dancers...

 

[TrashJunkie]

In my social circle "Junkie" describes one who puts most(if not all) of their time getting or trying to find drugs, We even call the potheads junkies despite thier arguements.
~K