What is a tweaker? Please help me understand.

Usually refers to a crystal meth addict.

Isn't that like a speaker or something?

Or something to use to pluck out your eyebrows.

Often known for "Tweeking" things...usually on speed, the male "tweeker"
will often obsessivley take things apart with disaterous results like VCR's..
Radios, or other gadgets into the wee hours of the morning.

When bikes are involved the formula often goes:
Tweekers + Bikes = total chaos, distruction, etc.

I've unfortunatly delt with more than my share of them lately.
It's a big problem here.

That.

I thought it was an adjustable lead for the spinnaker sheet.

That's what we used to call jeweler's screwdrivers and other 'tweakers' we used for adjusting electronic potentiometers, coils and such.

+1

The Excelite Greenie or the one that Extron used to ship with all their computer video interfaces being the prime examples.

www.urbandictionary.com

I haven't run into that combo personally, but I've been hearing about meth heads "building" bikes. I guess when people start using better locks and you can only get away with a derailleur and a brake you work with what you've got. I've also heard that in the midwest they've been scavenging for arrowheads in fields. (although that probably happened once and the journalist turned it into an arrow-head pandemic)

In reply to the OP, I originally heard the term used to refer to meth addicts and then more broadly to refer to someone who just acted like that. Kind of like people used to call someone a "****z". Oh, and doesn't South Park have a character called tweak?

Tweakers are speed freaks...

edit (bad drug speed not good healthy bike speed)

Oh man that before and after pic is just awful(assuming it's real). They should show that in HS, not that stupid frying egg on drugs bit or whatever they show nowadays.

The pics are probably real as these individuals can begin to pick at their own skin. plus add a couple of years there.

Cranksters.

Well, I guess that makes it the Fugly drug.

Yes, and that's exactly the point of the program this picture is from. This Multnomah County, OR sheriff's deputy goes to all the schools around here in an effort to appeal to the vanity of the average teenager. I understand that the deputy contacted all the people whose mug shots these are and they gave permission to use them for this program. Even the tweakers don't want to see kids go down this road.

Thanks everybody. I read the following thread and didn't understand:

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...hlight=tweaker

Now I do and am a little bummed about it.

Because the posters were making connections between tweakers and bike theft?

No, I'd never seen the before and after addict pics before. The pics are depressing to me.

Oh. I forget how immune to it I've become. I work in a drug treatment clinic in a city that's a meth epidemic hotspot. It would be weird if one didn't come through the door.

If it makes you feel less depressed about them, a great many bike thieves (here in Portland at least) and identity thieves tend to be methheads.

That first meth head picture is on a huge bulletin board south of Minneapolis on Hwy 52. It's kind of startling.