Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. detoxification after a period of drink or drug addiction; thus Detox, any hospital or similar establishment that specializes in detoxification of drink or drug addicts.

1975		J. Roe The Same Old Grind 96: She had to be hauled to the De-Tox ward at the County Hospital.
1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1978		N.Y. Times Mag. 6 Aug. 11: I went to detox again [...] and it’s been five years since I came out and I haven’t had a drink or pill since.
1991		D. Widgery Some Lives! 103: Could you arrange detox for my boyfriend: he wants to come off.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 56: He’s just a fuckin hound [...] in and out of the boob and the detox, a recidivist waster.
2006		F.X. Toole Pound for Pound 127: He wants me to go to detox.
2009		P. Temple Truth 252: The first two or three days [i.e. not drinking] were detox, twitchy, irritable, aware of feeling tight in the shoulders, in the neck, in the back.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 42: I’ve taken her and the kid down to Spain so she can do a detox.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 109: It had been a stipulation of his admittance that he completed detox before they began his re-education.
2019		N. Walker Cherry 261: When Emily went to detox I was supposed to not do heroin.
2019		P. Temple ‘High Art’ in The Red Hand 34: ‘[I]f you think I can do something the cops can’t, you need a mind detox’.
2021		T. Pluck Boy from County Hell 257: ‘I’m going to need detox’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1975		Canadian 18 Oct. 7/1: I’m looking at a very shaky scrawl that tells me of my first day there, in the detox area where everybody – drunk or sober – starts off [OED].
1985		J. Wambaugh Secrets of Harry Bright (1986) 243: I told him [...] I’d go to a de-tox center and clean up and never do it any more.
1998		G. Plimpton Truman Capote 440: After he came out of one of his detox programs.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook][T]he city’s jails have become its de facto mental hospitals and detox centers.

3. (N.Z. prison) a very short sentence, c. 90 days.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 55/1: detox n. a very short sentence of about three months in length.