drug

noun

1. A substance used to treat an illness, relieve a symptom, or modify a chemical process in the body for a specific purpose.

   “Aspirin is a drug that reduces pain, acts against inflammation and lowers body temperature.”

   “The revenues from both brand-name drugs and generic drugs have increased.”

   “whence merchants bring their spicy drugs”

   “In the future, he says, a focus on the hate circuit may open new avenues for treatment – including new drugs and psychotherapies – that target this and other specific circuits in the brain.”

2. A psychoactive substance, especially one which is illegal and addictive, ingested for recreational use, such as cocaine.

   “We took drugs and partied all night.”

   “They're on drugs.”

   “She used to be a drug addict.”

   “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

   “You have a twelve-year-old kid being told from the time he's like five years old that all drugs are bad, they're going to screw you up, don't try them. Just say no. Then they try pot.”

3. (broadly)Anything, such as a substance, emotion, or action, to which one is addicted.

   “Oh, get that buzz / Love is the drug / I'm thinking of”

   “Inspiration is my drug. Such things as spirituality, booze, travel, psychedelics, contemplation, music, dance, laughter, wilderness, and ribaldry — these have simply been the different forms of the drug of inspiration for which I have had great need […]”

   “Fear was my drug of choice. I thrived on scary movies, ghost stories and rollercoasters. I dreamed of playing the last girl left alive in a slasher film — the one who screams herself hoarse as she discovers her friends' bodies one by one.”

   “Because your love, your love, your love is my drug”

   “The truth is...eating is my drug. When I am upset, I eat...when I am sad, I eat...when I am happy, I eat.”

4. Any commodity that lies on hand, or is not salable; an article of slow sale, or in no demand.

   “And virtue shall a drug become.”

   “[…] Sermons are mere Drugs. The Trade is ſo vaſtly ſtocked vvith them, that really unleſs they come out vvith the Name of VVhitfield [i.e, George Whitefield] or VVeſtley [John Wesley], or ſome other ſuch great Man, as a Biſhop, or thoſe ſort of People, I don't care to touch, […]”

5. (Canada, US, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, informal)Ellipsis of drugstore.

   ““I’ll go this far,” I answered him. “We’ll try going over to the drug. You, me, Ollie if he wants to go, one or two others. Then we’ll talk it over again.””

6. (obsolete)A drudge.

   “Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded / The sweet degrees that this brief world affords / To such as may the passive drugs of it / Freely command, thou wouldst have plunged thyself / In general riot”

verb

1. (transitive)To administer intoxicating drugs to, generally without the recipient's knowledge or consent.

   “She suddenly felt strange, and only then realized she'd been drugged.”

2. (transitive)To add intoxicating drugs to with the intention of drugging someone.

   “She suddenly felt strange. She realized her drink must have been drugged.”

3. (intransitive)To prescribe or administer drugs or medicines.

   “Past all the doses of your drugging doctors”

4. (intransitive, rare)To use intoxicating drugs.

   “To soften the blow from working in such unfamiliar territory, I drank and drugged at the end of the day.”

5. (US, dialectal, form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of drag

   “You look like someone drug you behind a horse for half a mile.”

   “look what the cat drug in”

   “[…] their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.”

   “When Blackburn called, I drug the telephone cord twenty feet out of the office and sat on the cord while I talked with him.”

   “It's about time you drug it home, Jeff!”