Quitting Cold Turkey!

Today, we find ourselves looking at another great phrase to guess at, thanks to the suggestion of HMiller2014. I shall give it my best effort!

Being that I smoked tobacco, off and on for 4o plus years, I’m well versed in the quitting process… trust me, I tried them all! Finally, just about 2 years ago, God walked me through quitting the habit, Cold Turkey! In truth, when you find yourself so broke and desperate that you’re willing to smoke plain tobacco, rolled in old grocery store receipts… it’s time!

Regarding our flapping figure of speech, let’s take a guess at it’s meaning and origin. I’m thinking, the idea of taking all the time and effort to prepare and serve a Turkey dinner, could easily be replaced by just eating the meat in plain cold slices, to save time. One could do the whole Bird Party, or simply eat Cold Turkey! From here, I suppose it became a popular saying to represent a quick something instead of the long drawn out version. Eat cold turkey, quit cold turkey, stop cold turkey, or whatever else one wants to add to the list. It’s a pretty versatile saying, if I do say so myself.

Let’s ask Googlianna what she thinks…

Wikipedia pretty much sticks to the idea of quitting a habit, but not much more helpful information was forthcoming, unless I wanted to read through two pages of odd examples. I just copied the basics from this site:

“Cold turkey” refers to the abrupt cessation of a substance dependence and the resulting unpleasant experience, as opposed to gradually easing the process through reduction over time or by using replacement medication.

I’m not satisfied with this answer, as it didn’t give us nearly enough info, so let’s find some more help:

Here’s a pretty darn complete explanation from a site called plansponsor.com. It reads as follows,

Often now the phrase is used in relation to quitting something addictive, such as hard drugs or cigarettes. According to Merriam Webster, the theory was described by the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in 1978: “It derives from the hideous combination of goose pimples and what William Burroughs calls ‘the cold burn’ that addicts suffer as they kick the habit.” In “Cop Speak: The Lingo of Law Enforcement and Crime,” Tom Philbin recites a second theory, that “the term may derive from the cold, clammy feel of the skin during withdrawal, like a turkey that has been refrigerated.”

However, the phrase was used in different ways earlier on. In a cartoon that appeared in newspapers on November 12, 1920, ace slangman Thomas “TAD” Dorgan used cold turkey this way: “Now tell me on the square—can I get by with this for the wedding—don’t string me—tell me cold turkey.” The editors of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang have found an earlier use: a 1910 usage where the speaker lost $5,000 cold turkey, in the sense of losing it outright.Merriam Webster speculates it may be that the original cold turkey was a combination of cold (“straightforward, matter-of-fact”) and the earlier talk turkey, which dates back to the early 1800s and refers to speaking plainly.

While I feel confident that I was on the right track, what I didn’t see coming, was the cold bumpy skin that birds have… hmmmm… who’d of thought of that?

By the way, I’m so eternally grateful to say that I’ve not touched cigarettes since I quit this last time, nor have I any desire to pick em back up again, ever! Thank You God!