Do you ever hear a word and wonder where it came from, and why we use it? That's etymology, my dude.

Wtf is etymology?

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Good question. Basically, etymology is the science of investigating how words came to be and how words have developed over time. Rachel Barney has a pretty spicy explanation in the Oxford Studies of Ancient Philosophy:
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As practiced by Socrates in the Cratylus, etymology involves a claim about the underlying semantic content of the name, what it really means or indicates. This content is taken to have been put there by the ancient name-givers: giving an etymology is thus a matter of unwrapping or decoding a name to find the message the name-givers have placed inside.

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What the hell does this have to do with drugs?

Kind of nothing, kind of everything. These days, there's a lot of debate over the words we use. For instance,
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• Social justice issues, like how to describe gay people, how to talk about disabilities, and how to eradicate sexist language from the workplace.
• Environmental issues, like whether we should say "global warming" or "climate change", and when exactly it goes from "climate change" to "climate crisis".
• Art and cultural expression issues, like whether or not violent song lyrics contribute to juvenile delinquency or how to define art itself.
• Government and political issues, like protecting First Amendment rights and what exactly you're allowed to scream at police officers before you get arrested.

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No matter your stance on any given topic, we can all at least somewhat agree that words have weight and significance. Dan Jurafsky, a Humanities professor from Stanford, explains it like this:
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Understanding why and how languages differ tells about the range of what is human, discovering what’s universal about languages can help us understand the core of our humanity.

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All of this made me wonder about drugs and the people who use them. Drug users have unique slang, syntax, and structure that develops independently of the traditional language. Not only that, but drug users deal with incredible amounts of stigma from the community; stigma which begets even more convoluted terms to describe and label users and their habits. If language can have such a powerful effect on our attitudes, beliefs, mental processes, values, and feelings, I figured it would be worth it to look into a few of the terms we typically pepper into our speech. Maybe understanding the words themselves will help us better understand the community and its relationship to the rest of the world. So...yeah. Check out the history of some American drug slang, if you wish.

The Etymologies of Tweak-Speak:

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• Junkie: Someone who is addicted to any narcotic, originally used in the context of morphine addiction.

We'll dive right in with one of the most confusing words on the list. We know that junkie and junkhead both appeared as a way to describe drug users around 1910-1920. The root of the word is junk, and that's where we get stuck. No one seems to know where exactly junk came from, since it's been popping up randomly for the past 800 years or so, with centuries of lost record in between.
The Javanese are an ethnic group native to Java island and the surrounding area, in what is modern-day Indonesia. From as early as 1200 AD, the Javanese were experts at building boats, which they called djons. At this time, seafaring trade was expanding across the world, and China wanted a slice of the action. The only problem was that they really didn't know how to make boats sturdy enough to go all the way to the Indo-European regions where most of the trade was happening. So they copied the djons, which became junks.
Fast forward to the mid-14th century, and the junk ships were a huge part of international trade. The Portugese were so impressed with the junk ships, they created the word junco to describe them. From there, it became a maritime word that sailors used. This is the first time we see junk in English - which meant "old cable/rope used for caulking ships".
Basically, if your boat got a hole in the side, you could use some old rope (junk) to patch the hole. The English use may have been influenced by Old French as well, where junc was a type of native reed (the reeds were fiberous enough to possibly be made into ropes and other things). In sailor terms, junk was used to describe a lot. Salt junk became a popular term for the meat that sailors ate while away at sea. The preserved meat they ate was like beef jerky, and salt junk described how tough it was, just like the junk ropes they used to repair their ships. It's the first time we see junk used in a negative way. The sailors would rather eat a sirloin steak, of course, but if they were at sea they were stuck eating the salt junk.
By the early-1800's, the American settlers were using junk not just to describe old rope, but anything that was old/needed to be thrown out. In a journal entry, one man describes "junking" lumber, stripping it down for firewood and getting rid of the excess.
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Fast forward to the Prohibition Era. American gangsters had enormous power in the smuggling/trafficking of drugs and alcohol since people couldn't purchase them legally. It's unclear exactly how junk came to describe opiates, but the term was popularized with morphine and heroin users.
From there, junkie emerged shortly after. There's a theory that junkie is because addicts were stealing scrap metal (junk) to fund their habit, but there isn't a lot of evidence this was the case. In fact, we had a lot less scrap metal in the Prohibition Era than we do today, since it was reused in future building projects. The stereotype of drug addicts selling copper wire or other scrap materials probably came about later.
It's also interesting to note that the "-ie" ending in junkie is what we call a "diminutive possessive". Big words, but it basically means if you have an object, adding -ie or -y is a Dutch ending that describes the person who has a relationship to/owns the object. It's used it to show affection, like a familial relationship. For instance, a babe became a baby, a pup became a puppy, and a mama became a mommy.
So while junkhead or junker meant someone who literally "used junk", the word we use (junkie) seems to indicate someone who literally "loves junk". I love junk, how about you guys?
It's also important to understand that junk really means something different from trash. For instance, we have junk sales (or "rummage sales") in the United States, but we don't have trash sales. Trash and garbage are words used to describe things that are rotten, expired, absolutely no good anymore. Junk, on the other hand, is something that is just in disuse, but the idea is that it can be repurposed and reused again. So maybe junkies aren't trash after all, but people who can be repurposed into something even better someday. Just a thought.
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• Addiction: The physical or psychological inability to stop consuming a substance despite negative consequences

Addiction in terms of drug use came about in the early 1900's. Again, it was first used in the context of morphine. Not long after, an addict came to mean someone who was addicted to a certain drug or behavior. The word itself is very old and has an extremely confusing history. Richard J Rosenthal investigated the whole thing to an amazing extent in his piece for the Journal of Addiction Research & Theory in 2018. He's way headier than I am, so I'll just let him tell you about it.
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Addictio, the abstract noun derived from the verb, was the technical Latin term for the judicial act by which a debtor was made the slave of his creditor.
The sentence was pronounced, or spoken, by the judge, or praetor, according to the ancient law of the Twelve Tables. Where exactly did this leave the addictus, which in the passive form referred to the hapless individual who was physically handed over to his creditor by the praetor’s authority and physically led off in chains, to be held for sixty days or until the debt was paid? Failure to pay the debt after the lapse of the statutory sixty days rendered the debtor his creditor’s permanent property. He could then, at the creditor’s discretion, be kept, killed or sold as a common slave.
For the Romans, enslavement became increasingly associated with the passive forms of addicere, which of necessity would take on a very different connotation from the active form. To understand this, one must appreciate the distinction Romans made between active and passive forms of the verb, and in fact between active and passive in all forms of behavior. To be the recipient, to be acted upon, was to be less than. A passive human subject was a defeated individual, the object of someone else’s power. Being sentenced to be another person’s slave would be particularly humiliating. It would mean not only the loss of one’s citizenship but of one’s personhood.
The theme continued to be developed well into the imperial period. The most striking aspect of the use of addicere in each of these instances is the idea of bondage or enslavement. However, the object of that enslavement had evolved over the course of six centuries. What started as literal, the fate of the debt bondsman (addictus) under the ancient Law of the Twelve Tables, became metaphorical. One could become enslaved by vice (e.g., gambling, drinking, gluttony). A behavior like gambling, which previously might have led to one’s being sentenced into slavery, now was the enslavement.
The English verb ‘addict’ found particular resonance among the early church reformers. It’s earliest known appearance in English was in a tract by the Protestant reformer John Frith. It involves the act of choosing between two or more things. He apparently understood it as ‘preference’ or ‘choice,’ meaning (in a Christian context) the individual’s preference for a particular doctrine or interpretation of the Bible. [The Church] emphasized the dangers associated with a mistaken choice (Catholicism, the Pope, icons and idols). Most prominent was the danger of grievously offending God or of being led down the wrong path away from God. The Reformers extended their concerns to the physical realm, where one could be addicted to physical pleasures like gluttony and drunkenness.
Such ‘choices’ need not be actively chosen, however. The most influential of the Protestant Reformers next to Luther, John Calvin, [believed] man was so corrupted and enslaved by sin that he was incapable of choosing correctly. It was only through God’s grace that one was turned away from depravity and bad choices. An accomplished Latinist and writing in Latin, Calvin drew upon the legal, rather than the augural, usage of the Latin verb addicere to indicate that it is something done to or for one; it is not voluntary or within one’s control. This would be in line with the early legal meaning of addictio in Latin, where one did not act freely but was acted upon by the law [and] made the slave of one’s creditor.
[Writers from the 16th century on] were using medical metaphors to convey the seriousness of the problem, and we can't help noting that the language of disease was used both for the individual and for society. Furthermore, it was not addiction itself that was the disease, it was drunkenness or gambling, and when they referred to addiction, it was to convey ‘attachment’ or ‘preference.’
When the word addiction was deliberately omitted from four consecutive editions of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, it was because it was considered pejorative, stigmatizing, and too difficult to define. There were simply ‘too many meanings’ the term lacked any ‘universally agreed upon definition’: the result of using it was ‘conceptual chaos’.
Inclusion in DSM-5 represents behavioral addiction’s first official recognition as a diagnostic entity. It is therefore especially notable that, in addition to the lack of a definition, there are neither criteria nor guidelines for the assessment of potential disorders.

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...like...wtf. For sure.
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Can we all just take a minute to remember that this song existed though? God, 2008 was a simpler time. (If you wanna get hit over the head with a brick from the past, I encourage you to listen to Paralyzer or Disturbia again, just sayin)
Then we end the root with -er, which is for "connected with, pertaining to; the man engaged in". That comes from the old Latin -arius and -arium, which is the same reason an aria is an opera solo. So I mean, referring to tweakers in general as tweakarium and a tweaker as a tweakarius is valid (probably not, but it sounds cool).
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• Tweak (also tweaking/tweaked/twacked/tweaker): Under the influence of methamphetamine

We can trace tweak through history fairly well. It starts with the Proto-Indo-European word \dwoh,* meaning "two".
[Side note: We currently can't trace words farther back than Proto-Indo-European (PIE) or any "Proto" language. There's no written record of PIE, and we really can't prove it was a language at all. Linguists compare words from newer languages that are alike in sound and meaning, and from there, group them into the "families" of Proto languages. PIE may have originated as early as 3300 BCE, which is old as shit (like before people were using wheels and domesticating horses). PIE is the most influential Proto language and has been studied the most, since English, Portugese, Russian, Italian, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and many others have all originated from PIE]
From there, \dwoh* was found in Old Armenian with կից, meaning "a cross-road" and in Old English as tweo, meaning "two".
Both of these words created the Old English tweag later on, meaning "trouble, doubt, distress". It makes sense when you consider how someone at a "cross-roads" is faced with a tough decision, because they could go in one of two directions. In Old English, tweo became tweonleoht, which is where we get "twilight" from. It literally means "two-light", as in the part of the day when it's night and day at the same time.
Tweag became twikken, which has multiple meanings: trouble/doubt, plucking/pulling something, and twitch. All of these definitions are loosely connected to tweag with the idea that there is some type of problem (distress) that needs to be fixed. If you had a thorn in your foot, you might be distressed and pluck/pull it out. If you had an illness or were fearful (distress), you might twitch, and so on.
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This was the definition until the 1980's, when tweak came to mean "a fine adjustment". For example, resetting a spring inside a clock would be a "tweak", but completely renovating your house would not, since it's a big project/adjustment. From there, we got tweaker, which is an interesting phrase because it only applies to methamphetamine (and rarely other stimulants), instead of all drugs. This meaning traces itself back to twitch, and a tweaker is someone who is constantly twitching/super high/sporadic and uncoordinated because of using meth. Nervousness/paranoia are also described with this definition.
The -er root, again, gives the word a literal meaning of "someone who twitches".
Personally, I like the "minor adjustments" definition. Like, "Nah bro I'm not tweaking, just making minor adjustments to my neurochemicals, thank you".
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• Crank: crystal methamphetamine

At least where I live, crank is quickly becoming an outdated/obsolete term. I don't know of anyone personally who refers to meth as crank - my guess is that in the next couple of decades it will fall out of use in this context unless a particular area or community hangs onto it. That being said, it has been widely used as a way to describe meth for 50 years, and it started in an interesting way.
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In the Proto-Germanic language, \krank* was "to bend or curl up". This is also the origin of cringe, experiencing something so uncomfortable that you physically curl away. \krank* became crincan, "to bend or yield". This turned into cranc, which was used in Old-Middle Engilsh as crincan "to weave", crencestre "a spinster (woman who weaves)", and crankstaef, "a weaver's instrument (a loom)".
In the 16th century, the definition was generalized and used in other things, always meaning "to twist or bend" in some way. In the 1590's, we see records of crank meaning "the twists and turns of speech" (imagine how the stereotypical politician never gives a straight answer, "talking around" the question to avoid saying something that might sound bad). In 1848, crank was used to describe "an unreasonable act" (something that would be done by a person with twisted judgement. Even today, if we see a person behaving in a particularly cruel or cold manner, we might say that they have a "twisted mind").
By 1834, crank had become a tool. This hearkens back to the days of weaving, since a crankstaef was a piece of the loom that helped the wheel spin. By 1908, the rate of automobile manufacture was increasing. Building cars required the use of a crank, and it was around this time that crank also described the action of "turning a crank". In this way, it's quite possible to crank a crank, but you can also crank a dial, crank a lever, etc.
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It's a little unclear how crank came to be used as a word for meth, but the most probable theory comes from the Hell's Angels and similar motorcycle gangs that have been active in the U.S since the 1940's. In the 1970's, the U.S outlawed methamphetamine due to the increase of people abusing the drugs. It was around this time that the motorcycle gangs controlled a majority of production and distribution, usually to rural areas. Bikers used their bikes, of course, to transport and distribute the drug, sometimes concealing it in the crankshafts of their motorcycles. The theory is that this method of crankshaft transport lent meth the street name crank.
The only thing I question is how much meth you could realistically fit in the crankshaft of a motorcycle. If you've ever seen the crankshaft of a bike, they're really not that big. Plus, they get pretty hot, which would be a little problematic. That being said, motorcycle gangs were known for customizing and adding to their bikes for a variety of different reasons. They were usually expert mechanics who could customize their bikes to be faster, more durable, and go longer distances. So I suppose there's a hundred ways, in theory, that you could increase the available space in your crankshaft and keep it from getting too hot.
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• Gacked: Extremely high on a stimulant (mostly used in the context of meth), usually to the point of being incapacitated or uncomfortable. Stupid high.

Gacked is one of those expressions that has varied use depending on the community. When I lived on the West Coast, gacked was used quite often, then I moved to the Midwest and hardly encountered the phrase at all. Just my experience, not sure if it holds any water.
Anyways, gacked is a product of geeked, "to be filled with excitement or enthusiasm". You can be geeked over a new video game or makeup palette. Geeked for Christmas, geeked for the weekend, geeked to get your dick sucked. Whatever.
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We usually use geek to describe someone who's very enthusiastic about a particular subject. While being a nerd requires extensive knowledge on a subject, being a geek requires only enthusiasm. We find geck in Scandinavian and Germanic languages in the 15th century. Geck was "to croak, cackle, or mock". By the early 16th century, geck was used to describe a person, "a fool or simpleton".
Fast-forward to the 1940's, when traveling circuses and freak shows were a big deal. The freak show performers came to be known as geeks - the public saw them as eccentric simpletons, entertaining but not smart enough to cope for themselves or be considered legitimate members of society.
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In the 1980's, college kids began to use geek to describe their fellow classmates who were socially inept and obsessed with the computers and technology that were rapidly developing. By the 90's, we could say that someone was geeking out or geeked out if they were ignoring opportunities to socialize/have sex/etc. in favor of obsessing over tech gadgets.This explains how geeked became connected with stimulants. When you're geeked, you might show signs of social ineptness, like talking way too much, not being able to hold a normal conversation, displaying odd and erratic behaviors, or expressing ideas that seem strange and inexplicable.
I think the connection to hyper-focusing is interesting as well. In the 80's, a geek was obsessed with computers to the point where they took notice of nothing else (other people/other responsibilities /other hobbies etc.) Stim users, of course, can show this same intense and unwavering obsession, which may have strengthen the linguistic connection between geeks and meth users.
Gacked may have been a natural evolution to distinguish "meth geeked" from "geeked about other stuff", but some people believe gacked evolved from geeked because of the way you can throw up/get nauseous if you overdose on stimulants. If you were insanely high, you might vomit (or gack), and would be gacked as a result.
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-- K imma end it there for right now because I'm tired of looking at this etymology dictionary. You learned something today, bitch! Yayyyy. Proud of u. Go forth with your new and probably-useless knowledge, tweakarius.