And addicts deprived of drugs experience "cold turkey". Frrom Merriam-Webster:
Script for April 27, 2000
A listener's question about the expression cold turkey
inspired us to head straight for our slang files. Here's what
we dug up about the term that means "an abrupt complete
cessation of the use of an addictive drug; the symptoms
experienced by a person undergoing withdrawal from a
drug; or, without a period of gradual adjustment, adaptation,
or withdrawal."
One theory speculates that "cold turkey may derive from the
cold, clammy feel of the skin during withdrawal, like a
turkey that has been refrigerated." Columnist Herb Caen
dished up this tasty morsel on cold turkey: "It derives from
the hideous combination of goosepimples and what William
Burroughs calls 'the cold burn' that addicts suffer as they
kick the habit."
These explanations may sound plausible, but our
commitment to the truth forces us to dispose of these
theories cold turkey. Why? Because the phrase cold turkey
did not originate in the drug culture. When cold turkey was
first found in print in 1910, it was synonymous with outright,
as in, "I'd lost five thousand dollars cold turkey." The first
use of the expression in connection with drug withdrawal
was not recorded until 1921.
So when did the idea of cold turkey first get cooked up?
No one knows for sure, but since folks have been talking
turkey -- that is, speaking frankly and without reserve --
since at least the early 1900s, etymologists speculate that the
"all at once" sense of cold turkey developed sometime after
that, before being borrowed into the drug culture.
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