hophead

plural hopheads

1. USslangA drug addict.

   Why should we all go around on tiptoe forever pretending the kid's not a hophead?

   1990, John Updike, Rabbit at Rest, Knopf

   3 more examples

   For the alcoholic there are numerous substitutes: a period of intense diversion and excitement, pressing need for rest, hypnotic sedatives, sleep. Not for the hophead. Sedatives don't touch it; he can't rest; he can't even sleep.

   1939, Walton Hall Smith, Ferdinand Christian Helwig, Liquor, the Servant of Man, page 193

   “Oed,” looking at her puzzled, “you don't get addicted. It's not like you're some hophead. You take it because it's good. […]

   1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 107

   Hopheads, they screamed in three-inch headlines, which brought the inevitable police crackdown.

   1970, Wally Ferris, Across 110th, page 93

2. UKslangA beer enthusiast or homebrewer, with emphasis on hoppier types of beer (i.e. brewed with more hops, like IPAs).