The Argot of Addicts II

We ended the previous essay with the phrase "to hitch up the reindeer"--meaning to be about to take drugs. Perhaps images of snow and white things (i.e., cocaine) were dancing like sugar plums in the mind of the addict who coined it. And, the fun continues. The phrase "to be from Mount Shasta" meant to "be addicted to drugs." But my son and I discussed this term. Did this phrase mean to be on drugs because Mount Shasta was always covered with white and thus the addict would feel like he wanted to "dive in" to the rich "snow" (or cocaine) or did it mean (my son's suggestion) that if you were from Mount Shasta you were always "high"? Indeed, the word "high" is part of the "argot" of the 1930s, defined as "to be excessively full of drugs." Some sentences in which the word "high" to mean drug addiction were used were: "She is as high as a steeple" or "He is higher than a Georgia pine." [If you were an inexperienced or ignorant addict you were called a "Hoosier fiend." I bet the 1930s-style addict had a better knowledge of US geography than people today.] A person who was "high" on drugs could also be called "geed up, polluted, full of poison, steppin' high, leaping, leapin' an' stinkin', purring, purrin' like a cat." They definitely need a teacher to help them with their final "g's," don't you think?

Well, often you had to use a hypodermic needle to induce the pleasure that you wanted as a drug addict. What did you call that needle, that most blessed source of temporary salvation? Well, a harpoon. But it was also called a spike, the point, a luer, nail or, to keep up our geographical knowledge, Bay State. I have wracked my brains on this one, but it probably is a reference to the hooked end of Massachusetts, even though if the needle I was about to use to inject myself was so curved, I would think twice about being a drug addict.

Names for the Drugs and Other Things

Well, the drugs you ingested had a technical name, no doubt, but the other names were more memorable. You could call it stuff, junk, smeck, hocus, mo-jo or other names but, as a theologian, I liked their reference to it as "God's medicine." Indeed, it must have been, especially when you got loaded. But often you could refer to the drugs by cryptic names. Heroin would be known as "H" and morphine as "M." As Professor Lindesmith tells us, "To camouflage a sentence like, 'Where can I buy some 'H'?' an addict might say, "Where can I find Harry?" Wow! Isn't that incredibly smooth? Or, to use another example, if an addict wanted morphine, he might say to another addict by way of camouflaging his talk, "I'm waiting for Martha." Nudge, nudge. Wink. Indeed, morphine was also known as "Miss Emma" (probably a Sunday School teacher of one of the "guys"), and chemically pure drugs were known as "McCoys." No doubt the latter was derived from the relatively new phrase (around 1900) of "the real McCoy" to denote something genuine. A word like "Dr. White" could also camouflage a reference to drugs. "Only Dr. White can help me out." A "white nurse" was also another word for drugs.

Well, there are many other interesting phrases and words. A "cat nap" was a "short snatch of sleep which the addict may get during withdrawal." I don't know if that phrase originated in the drug world or not. A "wing-ding" was "an effort on the part of an addict to get drugs by pretending to be suffering from some pain or disease, or by deliberately injuring himself." This could also be referred to as to throw a twister or to throw a meter.

Not everyone, however, was a mainline user. The community of drug addicts, such as it was, developed a whole terminology for "part-time" users. These people were variously referred to as having a weekend habit or Saturday-night habit, chippy-habit, ice-cream habit, or chicken-shit habit. Such a person was just dabbling or playing-around. After all, there were drug users, and then THERE WERE DRUG USERS.

Finishing Up--Going Cold Turkey

Well, often you got caught for taking drugs. Sometimes it was because a stool pigeon had reported you. Other times you just were just caught. Sometimes you were subjected to the "iron cure." This meant you had to kick the habit "cold turkey" (see below) in a jail or prison. For example, the Chicago Bridewell prison sent addicts to work in a stone quarry when they were kicking their habits. This practice was referred to as the iron cure, the steel and concrete cure, or the quarry cure. To go cold turkey meant that you would stop using drugs without gradual tapering off. You would stop all at once. You would kick the habit. The phrase "cold turkey" is first attested in English in 1921. "Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon..are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they [sc. drug addicts] are given what is called the 'cold turkey' treatment." Why did they so name it? Probably because the skin of a person withdrawing from use of drugs becomes whitened and "breaks out" in goosebumps. These goosebumps and the whitish skin make the person look just like one of those cold Thanksgiving birds which you pick up at your local market. Hence, cold turkey.

Much more could be said on the subject, but let me close with phrases and words that, as I recall, actually got me started on this inquiry. I ran into the phrase "joy pop," which was introduced in 1951 by Time Magazine in the following sentence: "A sniff of heroin is a 'snort of horse,' and an injection under the skin a 'joy pop.'" A joy-pop was an occasional injection. I think the phrase has dropped out of use, except in reference to an unpopular brand of Suzuki car (Every Job Pop Turbo), an art exhibition in Japan (a retrospective on Pop Art) and a lewd website, bachelorette.com, which sells what they call "joy pops" in the shape of penises. Oh well, the joy of pop.

Then, from there, I think I went from a snort of horse to a "boot of scag" (a "buddah scag" also), which meant the same thing. Then I looked up scag/skag, which referred both to heroin and an unattractive woman. And then, I went from skag to skanky, but I realized that I was far afield and should return to my insult words. Just in time for Christmas Eve.

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