She was hospitalized Aug. 28 after going into cardiac arrest during outpatient surgery for her throat. Dan Steinberg/AP Joan Rivers shows off her diva necklace during arrivals for the 44th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in 2002.
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia. narcotics. n. 1) techinically, drugs which dull the senses. 2) a popular generic term for drugs which cannot be legally possessed, sold, or transported except for medicinal uses for which a physician or dentist's prescription is required.
Whether they are pharmaceutically produced or made in home laboratories, narcotics are drugs produced from a base of opium. Often called opiate drugs in order to differentiate them from other classes of drugs, they are the same things. Opiate drugs are also called opioids. This term has come into use because many people believe the term narcotic is interchangeable with drug. For this reason, it is important to begin the discussion with a definition of the term narcotics.. Its origin began when a Greek physician used the Greek word narcosis to describe all drugs that made people sleep, dulled the senses, or numbed and treated pain.