Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) to become temporarily comatose following the immediate effects of an injection of heroin or any other opiate drug.

1952		‘Hal Ellson’ Golden Spike 33: He [...] began to nod, forgetting everything.
1965		H. Huncke in Huncke’s Journal (1998) 32: He was zonked and wanted to nod off in the apartment.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 134: A half hour later the four junkies sat, still nodding and making incoherent conversation.
1971		D. Goines Dopefiend (1991) 22: Addicts nodding and searching for veins to shoot the dope in.
1971		H.E. Roberts Third Ear n.p.: nodding out n. a drug stupor.
1988		H. Gould Double Bang 10: You noddin’ out or what, Edmund?
1989		(con. 1940s) Courtwright & Des Jarlais Addicts Who Survived 113: Drug addicts in Philly at that time were very rare [...] You didn’t see nobody sittin’ and noddin’.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 375: They too busy noddin’ out. They too doped up and cooled out to tear up anything.
1997		L. Davies Candy 23: I wouldn’t have small pupils, or nod off and have him cancel the whole deal.
1997		L. Pettiway Workin’ It 93: People just sit around either nodding or bugging, you know, if they’re coke heads.
c.2003		Dalton Vrij ‘Tying Off’ on Inter-zone.org 🌐 The effort of say Skin Head Pat, to be nodding out every night around 10:00, is huge compared to the efforts required by some weasel just popped out of jail all clean and sassy, nodding and itching on a good 15 dollar quarter.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 265: So what if he’d [...] nodded out before the punchline of a joke.
2012		D. Whish-Wilson ‘In Savage Freedom’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] Stay here an’ nod off, or have a wank or sumpthin.
2019		N. Walker Cherry 265: [W]e would be high as shit and I’d nod out in my chair a little and drop lit cigarettes in my lap.
2021		T. Swerdlow Straight Dope [ebook] He nodded out on a stormy night and broadsided a semi at fifty miles an hour.

(b) to suffer the same effects when the drug is cannabis.

1970

G. Scott-Heron Vulture (1996) 110: I had smoked enough to lay out and nod for a week.