Drug Abbreviations

Drug is substance to ingest that affect the mind in a way that you want and that are not established in your country, so you are not allowed to possess and use them (or only under certain conditions) by law.

This description is so long because of what comes after the decimal point. In the Netherlands, alcohol is a stimulant that is well established: almost everyone thinks it is normal and you are allowed to use it by law. But alcohol is not considered a ‘drug’. The drug khat is not a drug in Somalia, but it is in the Netherlands.

People take drugs for their mental and physical effects. Drugs affect the brain . Some change your consciousness. Sometimes that’s fun, but it can scare you, panic, and do weird things like jumping out the window. This can happen with magic mushrooms, LSD, ayahuasca, bufo, khat, psilocybin and other substances to ‘trip’ with.

Some drugs make you feel like you have more energy. This happens, for example, with ecstasy (xtc ), speed and coke. Or they wake you up extra. Other drugs make you sleepy, dreamy and drowsy, for example hash and weed. You can become mentally dependent on it and you will then only achieve little at school or work. Heroin and other opiates have a sedative effect, as do alcohol and sleeping pills. They make you relax, so that you find life more beautiful at that moment than it really is. People can also become addicted to sleeping pills and tranquilizers (Valium, barbiturates).

Some people are always looking for new drugs and try everything: swallowing mephedrone, a certain plant fertilizer, poisonous saliva from certain tropical frogs (bufo) or drugs to stun cows (GHB).

What is a drug in the Netherlands and what is not, is listed in the law in two lists: one for soft drugs and one for hard drugs. According to the law, soft drugs have a small chance that they affect someone’s health. There is a high risk of abuse, addiction and other problems with hard drugs. People think differently about ‘soft’. Hash and weed have been on the list for soft drugs for a long time, from the time when there was less of the active ingredient THC in weed. But weed has become more and more potent and people are getting ‘high’ faster and faster. Some find weed not so soft (English for ‘soft’) anymore.

In the English language, the word ‘drug’ means both ‘medicine’ and ‘narcotic’. Over thousands of years, people have come to know some medicines as stimulants. They have started using those drugs for pleasure rather than for pain and illness. That happened a long time ago with the painkiller opium, for example. In the Netherlands, for example, ‘drug’ has come to mean ‘forbidden stimulant’. The word comes in a roundabout way from ‘drierij’, an old Dutch word. In the past, a drugstore sold drugs: dried medicinal things from nature, such as herbs, roots and pieces of tree bark. First the French adopted the word ‘drug’ from us, after which the English borrowed that word ‘droguerie’ from the French and turned it into ‘drug’.

By the word ‘narcotics’, doctors mean drugs to numb a patient so that they do not feel pain during an operation. The police mean ‘drugs’ by this word. Just think of the word ‘narcotics brigade’, the group of police officers who track down drug traffickers.

Also narcotics, intoxicants, narcotics. Also look at cocaine, coffee shop, eco drugs, ecstasy, EPO, hard drugs, hash, joint, junk, narcotics, overdose, magic mushrooms, party drugs, intoxication, smoking addiction, soft drugs, addictive substances, addiction, weed, ecstasy.

List of Acronyms Related to Drug