Talk:Tweaking (behavior)

The
The article is misleading - tweaking is a term used to describe the final stage of the effects of drugs like meth, speed and others. After the initial rush, then the prolonged high, the "come-down" is the tweaking, where users become uncomfortable, twitchy and cannot sleep. Users often try to combat tweaking with alcohol or heroin. - Berty

I spoke with a friend of mine who's a Substance Abuse Pre-doctoral and asked him if "Tweaking" or "Tweaker" are terms you actually use in the field, and he said no. I think this page needs to be either merged in to some sort of "Slang" category under Methamphetamine, changed to be more "professional" sounding, labeled as non-professional/slang or removed completely. Thoughts? --kvidell 20:48, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Edited the page to reflect it's slang-use. kvidell 21:15, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

While the "prevention" section seems to have good intentions (I find the suggestion of having a focus to be excellent advice for users of both legal and illegal substances), the rest of the article is extremely derogatory and pejorative. It seems to echo ridiculous pseudoscientific babble straight out of a DARE pamphlet; most of it smells like it started with cautious scientific/medical observations, and then underwent an injection of disgusting cliches and stereotypes. Punding and other psychotic behavior by methamphetamine abusers is serious stuff, and need not be turned into scaremonger-sludge. Not being an expert on the drug, I slapped an NPOV tag on the article and left it be; I hope somebody more qualified than I will come along and give it a dose of unbiased scientific reality. 71.136.50.128 09:50, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

This article sucks. a "prevention" section doesn't make any sense as tweaking is not something undesirable to the drug user. shaddix 11:21, January 01, 2006 (UTC)

Hello kvidell, shaddix and nameless IP--I am the author of the Prevention section. My qualifications do not extend to professions that make money from the health-related industries that deal with both the sales of drugs/medicines and treating those who take substances that are deemed a threat to society by the powers-that-be. However, I have had extensive experience with individuals who take speed; I have probably spent more time around actual users of drugs than any graduate student, even one studying to become a "Substance Abuse Professional", and it should be remembered that anyone in the business of assisting addicts to recovery is going to see a completely different side of these individuals than anyone who sees them in regular life. He or she will also be biased towards the subject by default being in the recovery industry, which makes the money it does only as long as drugs remain illegal and their use deemed antisocial.

That said, it does not always mean they're wrong - especially in matters related to science. Information coming from one who has been friend and coworker to probably hundreds of tweakers in my oddly-long-all-things-considered lifetime, obviously has its own bias.

But I felt compelled to offer it all the same. We get only the "approved by the US Federal Government" version of information about drugs from virtually every source. It is indeed serious stuff and I myself suffered from the confusion engendered in me by the drug education I received in the US public school system: the blatant lies of the ONDCP propagandists based upon the not-at-all-unbiased research of NIDA, which never pays researchers to find anything but negative data, so negative data is all the ONDCP reports upon. While no longer involved as much with the tweak scene as I had been 12 years ago, I stated what I did because I have seen different behavior in methamphetamine users than people who've never known them and seen them will come to expect. The "punding" behavior - stacking, counting and so on, might occur one in a hundred and it will be a person who is obsessive-compulsive to begin with. The drug does make one twitchy and hairtrigger and certain individuals always made me more nervous when they were on it than when they weren't. I've seen domestic violence result over an amount of the drug that would be about $60.00 (USA).

I've also seen the drug save college degrees and jobs: some people are of nature slow and "phlegmatic" in temperament, they lag behind in a world going forward too fast for them, and for these people, at those times, I honestly cannot say whether it was wrong for them to use the drug. Neither can I say that it was a bad idea for the awkward, shy, unsocialized girl who was my best friend for years who took it for about half a year and then stopped taking it, but only after having became interested in other people for the first time in her life to use it.

I added the comments that I did because this article came up at random when I first joined Wikipedia, and I thought, I should put something here that might actually help people. I disclaimered myself sufficiently by the first paragraph, I hope.

Regarding shaddix's comment about tweaking not being undesirable to the user: in this case, I was referring to the negative tweak that users do not generally desire. Most folks I have known who take speed don't like to get caught up in worrisome or angry thinking while they're tweaking. They would take speed because they were "slow" people living in a fast-paced and very competitive world, both at work and at play, they were always having to be "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" and the internal clockwork of their minds just didn't have what it took on its own to catch up. There were some others who would tweak specifically for entertainment, or to stimulate various creative engines, Writers, artists and musicians sometimes find sleep deprivation psychosis useful.

There are some things, it seems, that it's just impossible to say anything useful about without showing bias. I tried to be as neutral as possible, but how neutral is it to merely say "Drugs are bad, mmmkay"?

^- this comment wasn't signed.

While I'm not entirely sure it is or should be Wikipedia's mission to help drug users become better, more well-adjusted drug users, the article certainly does serve a purpose. Reading elsewhere, I came upon someone mention local people tweaking. Were this article not here, I'd have had no idea what he was on about. A general slang article, I probably wouldn't have found.

--Sircus 06:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

pejorative?
as someone who works directly with meth users and can testify to what is being said, I see absolutely no problem in how the subject matter is presented and described as is. It appears accurate to me and I certainly don't detect any serious bias. Unless this has been edited since kvidell's original comment, I don't see that any of his/her remarks to be valid at all and honestly it sounds a bit like this person is pushing their own personal agenda, whatever that is. It's not appropriate in my mind to throw around the "scientific objectivity" trump card to discredit information when it would just be easier for that person to admit that they 1) don't know what they are talking about; 2) have no personal experience about what is being talked about, or 3) don't AGREE with the information as presented. It sounds to me like kvidell doesn't AGREE with the information and is offering his/her editorial information instead, which is certainly biased to the hilt. If you want "objectivity" about stuff like this, here's what you need to do: shut your computer off, close the textbook, leave your cozy 3 bedroom condo in the burbs, drive down to the slummiest, scuzziest part of town, find a rundown tenement with boarded up windows and nervous looking people pacing at the street corners, ask one of them where you can score some jib, and see for yourself.  Or be a social worker, your choice.

Tweaking, Tweaker, is from Tweak
What's with the bullshit 'two week' => 'tweek' definition? Tweaker is from the word Tweak. Ie if you've been on amphetamines, you'll often start exhibiting very OCD like behaviour, and can't resist 'tweaking' every little thing to 'perfection', whether that's carefully lining up all the jars on a shelf, adjusting the volume controls of music that's playing, or carefully taping, then retaping posters to a wall. A lot of it is quite pointless like the punding examples.

- Anon. Wellington. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.238.36 (talk) 22:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Confusion in the Article
Ok, currently the leading sentence for the article says "Tweaking is a slang term of someone in a state of confusion."

I'd maintain that equating it with 'confusion' is *not* an accurate or standard definition. If you google usages, orlook at the Urban Dictionary, that's not how the term is used - http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tweaking

I feel uncomfortable about making a bit edit, but from various descriptions of people who are described as 'tweaking or tweakers' are not so much confused, as agitated, and either on stimulants of some sort, or emulating it and intent on making minor 'improvements' to their surroundings. Like if someone has been severely over-caffeinated. Possibly talking too fast, intently, eyes too open, quick jerky motions, and, like the root word, intent on fiddling and 'tweaking' with things. Slightly OCD behaviour, often making very small changes which are barely noticeable as improvements. So, for example, if someone gets very 'tweaky' about painting something, or programming something, or compiling a playlist of music, they wouldn't be confused, but being over-intent about 'perfecting' it, even if they weren't doing an awful lot, linked with fidgeting a lot, or doing pointless repetitive tasks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.154.238.36 (talk) 05:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)