When I use a word . . . The languages of medicines—what street drugs are called

Abbreviations

Some drugs are reduced colloquially to their initials: “C” for cocaine, “H” for heroin, and “M” for morphine. Here is an example from the 1920s, when these usages first emerged: “If the customer asks for morphine or cocaine, he will find the driver to be deeply aggrieved by this wicked insinuation and the serious impeachment of his character. For this reason, the customer must always remember to use the alphabetical letters, ‘M’ or ‘C’.”5 The author of this observation was Judge Emily F Murphy (1868–1933), writing under the name of “Janey Canuck,” when she first published accounts of her experiences as a Canadian magistrate in Maclean’s magazine; her pieces were later turned into a book, in one edition described as “Canada's first book on drug abuse.”

There are many other names for heroin.6 In the 1950s, “H” for heroin became “horse.” Shortening heroin to “hero” is appropriate, because supposedly when it was first given to employees of the pharmaceutical company Bayer, they said that it made them feel heroic.

“Jay” is short for joint, a marijuana cigarette.

“Shroom” is a shortening of mushroom and typically refers to the types that contain psilocybin.7

Many slang terms for ketamine and some of its effects include the letter K: K-bag, K-bomb, K-hole, K-job, K-land, and K-punch, M'Kay, Special K, and Vitamin K.8

Anthropomorphisms

Marijuana is often called “Mary Jane,” mimicking the Spanish given name “Maria-Juana” or “Mari-Juana.” There are many different spellings of “marijuana.” The earliest form listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is “mariguana,” from 1874, a Spanish form of the name; other spellings include marihuana and mariahuana. Judge Murphy called it “marahuana” and said that “[it] is known by chemists and physicians as cannibis indica” [sic].5

Borrowings

“Easy Rider” is a type of marijuana that’s easy to grow. The term has also been used to describe a sexually satisfying lover, a guitar, and a motorcyclist of a certain sort, as seen in the 1969 film.9

Compounding

“Cigarette joint,” a joint prepared by extruding the tobacco from a cigarette and replacing it with marijuana.10

Euphemisms

For example, “sucking the succour.”

History, legends, and fiction

“H.R. Pufnstuf,” for marijuana, is a riff on the American children's television series featuring an anthropomorphic dragon of that name. The slang term supposedly means “Hand-Rolled Puffin' stuff.”

Fictional drugs, of which there are many, deserve a separate entry. For example, “New Caprican Leaf” is a fictitious hallucinogen that features in Battlestar Galactica.

Metaphors

“Dope,” from the Dutch word “doop,” meaning sauce, was originally used to describe any thick fluid or semi-fluid used for any purpose, including a thick solution of a drug (OED 1872). Later it was specifically used to refer to a treacle-like extract of opium used for smoking (1886). The use of the word to mean a fool antedated these uses (1851), but the two senses seem to have subsequently coalesced, coming to mean “a person under the influence of, or addicted to, some drug.”11

Metonymy

“Nose candy” is cocaine, from the associated route of administration. Other similar terms include “sneeze” and “sniff.” Similarly, “smack,” for heroin or sometimes cocaine, comes from the Yiddish word shmekn, to smell or sniff.

Ordinary words given extraordinary meaning because of some similarity

From its colour, heroin is also called “snow” and “brown.”

Among the many slang names for crack cocaine, some refer to its appearance: Black Rock, Candy, Dice, Gravel, Grit, Hail, Hard Rock, Nuggets, and just plain Rocks.12

The many terms for marijuana include “grass” and “herb.” A roach is the unsmoked butt of a marijuana cigarette, perhaps because it fancifully resembles a cockroach.

Paronomasia

“Puffing the magic dragon” from the children’s song and “Bobbing the Marley” from the singer are both punning references to the use of marijuana.

Portmanteau words

“Bubbleberry” is a strain of cannabis produced by crossing the Bubblegum and Blueberry strains. The Blueberry strain was itself prepared by crossing three strains, the toponymic Highland Thai, Purple Thai, and Afghani Indica.13

“Crunked” is drunk on “chronic,” a form of high-grade or potent marijuana, sometimes cut with cocaine.

Rhymes

These include “wacky backy” and “sticky icky” for marijuana. Maui Wowie, or Maui for short, is a potent form of marijuana from Hawaii.

Suffixes

The addition of “-dine” to “banana, mimicking a possible drug name, resulted in “bananadine,” a coinage of Max Scherr, the editor of a US underground newspaper, Berkeley Barb, in 1967. Bananadine was supposed to be an alkaloid present in the skins of bananas. This became big news and even gained the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, no such alkaloid exists, although some continued to believe in the hallucinogenic effect of smoking dried baked banana skins.14

Technical terms turned into slang

“Bionic” has ironically been used to describe marijuana, since it artificially enhances a normal bodily function, namely sitting around doing nothing.

Toponyms

Marijuana is sometimes called “Indian hemp” or “Indian hay.” Hemp was originally used for making ropes but later the term became identified with the use of the plant as a hallucinogen. The Sanskrit word for hemp, “bhaṅgā,” gives rise to the slang form “bhang.” The Hindi word gānjhā gives the West Indian term “ganja.” The Arabic word ḥašīš gives “hashish,” shortened to “hash.”

“Kush” is a potent form of cannabis from a plant that grows in the Hindu Kush, a mountain range that stretches from central Afghanistan to northern Pakistan. Afghan Kush is the name given to a variety found in Afghanistan and the adjacent countries Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

Jamaican Haze is a form of marijuana that comes from the home of Bob Marley (see Paronomasia above).

Thomas Pynchon mentions Panama Red, a potent form of marijuana, in some of his novels. Here it is in a poem, “The Doper’s Dream” in Gravity’s Rainbow:

“Well we dallied for days, just a-lullin' and smokin',

In the flowering Panama Red,

Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea,

And those brownies so kind to your head.”

The brownies, of course, are hash brownies.15