“Cold turkey” has a surprisingly early paper trail, but no known inventor or proven moment of coinage. The expression appears in Canadian newspapers by 1910, where early evidence associates it with abruptly stopping an addictive drug. That makes it reasonable to say the phrase was in circulation by the early 20th century—not that it was necessarily coined in print, or in Canada. A newspaper’s first recorded use can only show that the expression was already available to its readers.
In the early 20th century, newspapers regularly covered drug dependence and attempts to treat it. “Cold turkey” named a stark approach to withdrawal: stop taking the drug at once, rather than reduce the dose gradually. The image of a sudden, unsparing break seems to have helped the expression travel beyond that medical context. It came to describe abruptly giving up any entrenched habit or dependence, and eventually habits with no connection to drugs at all.
A popular explanation says withdrawal can make the skin cold, clammy, and covered in goosebumps, like a refrigerated turkey. It is a memorable comparison, but its vividness does not prove it was the phrase’s source; no reliable evidence settles the metaphor’s origin. Other proposed links—to “talk turkey,” meaning to speak plainly, or to the plainness of eating cold turkey—are also tempting, but are not established by the early record. The evidence points more securely to the phrase’s association with abrupt withdrawal than to any particular explanation for its wording.
Today, someone might say, “After years of smoking, Lena quit cold turkey,” or, “I tried to quit social media cold turkey, but I was back online by Monday.” In both cases, the phrase contrasts an immediate break with a gradual reduction. “Cold turkey” endures because its blunt, concrete image makes a difficult all-at-once decision instantly clear.