Meaning & use
pill popping
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountableinformaldisapproving
The habit of taking tablets or capsules often and casually, especially painkillers, sedatives or recreational drugs.
Grammar: Uncountable: pill popping is common; hyphenated before a noun as in pill-popping habit.
Patterns
- rely on pill popping
- pill popping to cope
Doctors worry that pill popping has become a normal way to handle stress.
His pill popping started with painkillers after an injury.
Pill popping at parties worried the club's owners.
Common combinations
- habitual pill popping
- Habitual pill popping damaged her liver.
- recreational pill popping
- Recreational pill popping among students concerned the school.
- stop pill popping
- He decided to stop pill popping and see a therapist.
- pill-popping culture
- Critics blame a pill-popping culture for overuse of medicine.
- end up pill popping
- Without support, some patients end up pill popping.
Synonyms and how they differ
- overmedication
- Overmedication is clinical and may be a doctor's fault, while pill popping implies casual personal habit.
- drug abuse
- Drug abuse is broader and more serious, covering all substances and harm.
- self-medicating
- Self-medicating suggests treating a problem on your own, while pill popping focuses on the casual, repeated act of swallowing.
Word family
- pill noun
- a small tablet of medicine
- pop verb
- informally, to take quickly
- pill popper noun
- someone who takes pills often
- pill-popping adjective
- habitually taking pills
Practice
The article criticized the country's ______, saying people reach for a tablet at the first sign of discomfort.
Choose one answer.
Pill popping is the informal term for casual, frequent use of tablets. The other phrases are not the common expression.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “pill popping”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.