Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. sudden and total withdrawal from heroin addiction without tapering off or using any assistance from medication; also ext. to other drugs; attrib. use slightly earlier (see sense 2).

[1919		A. Baer Two and Three 10 Feb. [synd. col.] The Sultan of Cold Turkey has got the bug].
1920		Monthly Bulletin of the Department of Health in the City of New York X 42: Some addicts voluntarily stop taking opiates and ‘suffer it out,’ as they express it, without medical assistance, a process which in their slang is called taking ‘cold turkey’; most of them, however, have not the moral courage to do this and carry it through successfully.
1928		N.Y. Times 18 Dec. n.p.: Hitherto there had been but two treatments for the drug addict at the public hospitals; one was called the ‘reduction’ treatment and the other was known among addicts as ‘cold turkey.’.
1934		F. Tuohy Inside Dope 90: They have come to favour rapid withdrawal or else the still more violent sudden and total denial (called ‘cold turkey’).
1936		D. Maurer ‘Argot of the Und. Narcotic Addict’ Pt 1 in AS XI:2 120/1: cold turkey. Treatment of addicts in institutions where they are taken off drugs suddenly without the ‘tapering off’ which the addict always desires.
1956		‘Raymond Thorp’ Viper 115: ‘What’s this cold turkey?’ ‘Oh, the cure they tried in the old days [...] it was pure hell.’.
1961		T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 98: ‘England, where they don’t throw their junkies in a padded cell to have a cold turkey’.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 146: If some overzealous junky should succeed in hooking a born square, the square will eventually kick the habit cold turkey.
1977		‘John le Carré’ Honourable Schoolboy 414: I don’t like you to sit on my friend’s head [...] while he catch cold turkey.
1989		T. Blacker Fixx 151: [of amphetamines] Doing cold turkey, she’d be downright depressing.
1996		(con. 1964-65) B. Thorpe Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll 325: The prospect of cold turkey in the slot was really freaking Manny boy.
1999		Observer 26 Sept. 11: No heroin, and all the pain centres in the body start almost ‘screaming’. This is cold turkey.
2003		J. Lethem Fortress of Solitude 427: Then there’s you, scrawny freak from the street, ninety pounds once you beat the cold turkey.
2010		K. Richards Life 322: I can’t imagine what other people think cold turkey is like [...] The whole body just sort of turns itself inside out and rejects itself for three days.
2011		F. Bill ‘Coon Hunter’s Noir’ in Crimes in Southern Indiana [ebook] ‘You ain’t gone cold turkey on the brew [...] have you, J.W.?’.
2017		L. McInerney Blood Miracles : [He] convulses, still, like he’s doing cold turkey.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1921		Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 13 Oct. 15/6: Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon...are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they [i.e. drug addicts] are given what is called the ‘cold turkey’ treatment.
1928		N.Y. Times 18 Dec. n.p.: The ‘cold turkey’ treatment simply means confining the patient and depriving him or her entirely of the drug.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 235: the cold turkey cure The drug cure.
1953		Kramer & Karr Teen-Age Gangs 36: They give you the cold-turkey treatment for a while, they offer you a cap, and you blab everything you know.

3. the fundamental level, the basic situation.

1926		Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict. 7/1: Cold turkey – Definite statement of facts.
1927		C. Coe Me – Gangster 237: I could see he was not afraid of Flop when it came right down to cold turkey.

4. an easy target, a vulnerable person.

1928		E. O’Neill in Bogard & Bryer Sel. Letters (1988) 302: I am sure [the scandal] will be cold turkey for the news boys from now on.
1942		P. Wylie Generation of Vipers 138: All the rest of mankind was cold turkey, to be preyed upon.
1966		T.V. Olsen Hard Men (1974) 242: Angus was cold turkey like the rest.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 82: The midge, looking to save something for himself, tried to get her to come on cold turkey like other hookers, no kisses, entombed emotions, wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

5. in a non-drug sense, the act of withdrawing from a committment.

1999

J. Cameron Brown Bread in Wengen [ebook] No wedge coming in and he got withdrawal. Cold turkey.