Where Did the Expression “Quit Cold Turkey” Come From!?

It came from Alaskan turkeys that froze in place.

Ah, just kidding. I don’t really know.

TALKING TURKEY — “Listening to America” by Stuart Berg Flexner (1982, Simon and Schuster) has a big section on “turkey” including why turkey is called turkey. “.Our North American bird was erroneously named ‘turkey’ by European explorers as early as 1587, in confusion with the European turkey cock, a completely different bird.Other stories, that our word turkey comes from some Indian word for it, or from the doctor on Columbus’ ship shouting ‘Tukki!’ (Hebrew for ‘big bird’) when he first saw one, are not convincing.” But getting back to your question: “To talk turkey meant to speak plainly by 1830 (turkey gobbling was a distinct, natural sound on frontier farms) and the expression soon became ‘to talk cold turkey’; hence ‘cold turkey’ came to mean cold facts, unpleasant truths. By the 1940s ‘cold turkey’ was a drug addict’s term for a sudden and complete withdrawal from drugs (reinforced by the addict’s goose bumps, resembling uncooked turkey skin)…”

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/20/messages/1300.html

n. Slang.

1. Immediate, complete withdrawal from something on which one has become dependent, such as an addictive drug.
2. Blunt language or procedural method.
3. A cold fish.

Idioms: cold turkey

Immediate, complete withdrawal from something, especially an addictive substance; also, without planning or preparation. For example, My bad shoulder forced me to quit playing tennis cold turkey, or I’d never done any rock climbing, but decided to try it cold turkey. This term may have come from the earlier expression talk turkey (for blunt speaking). At first used strictly for abrupt withdrawal from drugs or alcohol, it soon was transferred to quitting any habit or activity. [Early 1900s]

Word Origin: cold turkey

Origin: 1922

By 1922, cold turkey was not always a leftover from Thanksgiving dinner. For an addict, it was quite the opposite. “This method of sudden withdrawall,” explained a writer that year, “is described in the jargon of the jail as ‘the cold turkey’ treatment,” It meant “to immediately and completely give up a substance, such as narcotics or alcohol, to which one was addicted.”

The shock to the system was such that few addicts voluntarily chose it. “Mention of the ‘cold turkey treatment’ gives a chill of horror to a drug addict,” said Newsweek in 1933. “It means being thrown in jail with his drug supply completely cut off.” And Mickey Spillane wrote in I, the Jury (1947), “I doubt if you can comprehend what it means to one addicted to narcotics to go ‘cold turkey’ as they call it.”

This use of cold turkey is an outgrowth of a previous sense, attested as early as 1910, meaning “extreme plainness and directness,” going back to talk turkey, attested in 1830. Carl Sandburg used the term this way in a 1922 letter: “I’m going to talk cold turkey with the booksellers about the hot gravy in the stories.”

Nowadays going cold turkey is not restricted to narcotics and alcohol addiction. We speak of it as an extreme means of quitting any attachment or habit that we find hazardous to our health: cigarettes, chocolate, a television show, sex–perhaps even a sports team.

http://www.answers.com/topic/cold-turkey