pill head
- noun
- /pɪl hɛd/
- Offensive
- He was known around the neighborhood as a pill head who couldn't go a day without his amphetamines.
Examples
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After struggling with addiction for years, he finally admitted he had become a pill head.
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Many pill heads struggle with addiction.
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In her memoir, she spoke candidly about her past as a pill head.
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The police warned that the neighborhood was becoming a hotspot for pill heads.
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He is a known pill head in our neighborhood.
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After struggling for years, she finally decided to seek help for being a pill head and started a rehabilitation program.
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I didn't realize he had become a pill head until I noticed the drastic changes in his behavior and health.
Synonyms
Slang for a person who often uses illegal drugs
A person who often uses illegal drugs
A person who is addicted to illegal drugs
A person who takes prescription pills too often and cannot stop
Having the look or behavior of people who use illegal drugs
Antonyms
How Addicted
Surface Forms
Morphology
This follows a productive English pattern where 'X‑head' denotes a person characterized by X (e.g. 'pothead', 'gearhead'), so a learner who knows 'pill' and the agent/obsessive sense of 'head' can infer 'someone who uses pills'. However, the specific nuance of habitual amphetamine use and the negative drug‑abuse connotation is not fully predictable from the parts alone, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Pill head comes from joining pill (a small drug tablet) and head (a word used for someone who is very into something). The picture is of a person whose life is centred on taking pills, so today it means 'a person who regularly takes pills and is often addicted'.