If you’re anything like me, “going cold turkey” means walking down the block to the local bodega and grabbing a delicious club sandwich, a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and the fizziest bottle of seltzer available. But the most common use of this idiom has nothing to do with the deli counter. Instead, it implies a complete and abrupt end to a habit, often under great stress.
“Quitting cold turkey” is commonly used to describe a method of abstaining from drugs or alcohol, but it can apply to any habit a person wants to quit: smoking cigarettes, biting fingernails, excessive social media use, you name it. Instead of gradually weaning off the habit, the person undergoes a complete and immediate withdrawal to reset their addiction. In this specific context, the idiom dates to a 1921 article about a Dr. Carleton Simon of Victoria, Canada, implying the method was used in extreme cases. Smith was said to give “the ‘cold turkey’ treatment” to the “most pitiful figures who have appeared before [him].”
While that usage caught on quickly, the term predates that article by at least a decade. The Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a 1910 usage where someone lost $5,000 “cold turkey.” In this sense, the expression comes from a combination of the word “cold,” meaning “straightforward,” and the idiom “talk turkey,” meaning “to speak frankly and get down to business.” “Cold turkey” was essentially a way to be concise and definitive.
While the usage of this phrase has changed over time, I’m certain that going cold turkey off anything requires guts. So stop being a chicken and start evaluating which of your habits are going on your New Year’s resolutions list.
