Definition of "drug"

whence merchants bring their spicy drugs

1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

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

1971, Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Harper Perennial, published 2005, page 3

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.

March 1991, unknown student, "Antihero opinion", SPIN, page 70

The only thing working against the poor Drug Abuse Resistance Officer is high-school students... He'd offer his simple lesson: Drugs are bad, people who use drugs are bad, and abstinence is the only answer.

2005, Thomas Brent Andrews, The Pot Plan: Louie B. Stumblin and the War on Drugs, Chronic Discontent Books, page 19

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 […]

2005, Jack Haas, Om, Baby!: a Pilgrimage to the Eternal Self, page 8

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.

2009, Niki Flynn, Dances with Werewolves, page 8

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.

2011, Joslyn Shy, Introducing the Truth, page 5

And virtue shall a drug become.

1685, John Dryden, Albion and Albanius

But sermons are mere drugs.

1743, Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. […], 3rd edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), London: […] A[ndrew] Millar, […]

“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.”

1980, Stephen King, The Mist

Past all the doses of your drugging doctors

1610 (first performance), Ben[jamin] Jonson, The Alchemist, London: […] Thomas Snodham, for Walter Burre, and are to be sold by Iohn Stepneth, […], published 1612; reprinted Menston, Yorkshire: The Scolar Press, 1970, (please specify the GB page), (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

[…] 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.

1961, Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron

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

2005, Diane Wilson, An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, page 193

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

2009 August 13, Tom Armstrong, Marvin (comic)

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

c. 1605–1608, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene iii]