Question by Tarık Oğuz Onur: what does “detox cold turkey” mean?

Best answer:

Answer by PQR Theorist
A cure for drug addiction where they suddenly stop all the drugs.

Answer by Pinyon
It means, to quit some substance (drugs, alcohol, etc.) without rehabilitation of any kind, but all by yourself. Just quit immediately and solo.

Question by Smile!: Where does the phrase “going cold turkey” come from?

Best answer:

Answer by Monty
“”Cold turkey” is an expression describing the actions of a person who gives up a habit or addiction all at once. That is, rather than gradually easing the process through reduction or by using replacement medication. Its supposed advantage is that by not actively using supplemental methods, the person avoids thinking about the habit and its temptation, and avoids further feeding the chemical addiction. The supposed disadvantages related to the abuse of drugs such as alcohol, benzodiazepines, and heroin are unbearable withdrawal symptoms from the total absence, which may cause tremendous stress on the heart and blood vessels and — in a worst case scenario — possible stroke or heart failure.

The etymology derives from the phrase talk turkey, in which someone deals matter-of-factly with a subject. Some, however, believe the derivation is from the comparison of a cold turkey carcass and the state of a withdrawing addict — most notably, the cold sweats and goose bumps. It is often preceded by the verb “to go,” as in “going cold turkey.” Yet another suggestion of origin is that cold turkey is a dish that needs little or no preparation. “To quit like cold turkey” would be to quit in the same way a cold turkey is served, instantly just as you are without preparation.

Answer by –>The Reverend
Cold turkey refers to the clammy, cold, sweaty and goose bumped state of the heroin addict that is trying to “kick” the habit. This happens when the junkie decides to give up heroin without any sort of support mechanism – such as methadone – to take the place of the heroin. The body reacts by turning cold, clammy, sweaty, and the skin resembles that of a cold turkey.

‘Without preparation’. First used in correlation with withdrawl from an addictive substance in the 1920s with regards to heroin addiction. The idea being that “cold turkey” is a food that requires little to no preparation to eat – hence doing something “cold turkey” means the action will be done without preparation & immediately. Also connected to the notion that the symptoms of withdrawl from many substances include cold sweats (moisture), and sallow skin – much like that of a cold, dead, turkey.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=going+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.

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.”

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

Origin:

Of course, the term ‘cold turkey’ in the literal ‘cold meat’ sense appears many times in recipes – ‘cold turkey salad’ etc. Neither of the meanings above appear to have any allusory link back to that though.

The most common use of the term is now in relation to drug withdrawal. The earliest reference I can find to that is from the Canadian newspaper The Daily Colonist, October 1921:

“Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon..are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, they [drug addicts] are given what is called the ‘cold turkey’ treatment.”

The 1936 edition of American Speech gave a definition of the term:

“Cold turkey, treatment of addicts in institutions where they are taken off drugs suddenly without the ‘tapering off’ which the addict always desires.”

The ‘plain talking/getting down to business’ meaning of the term is largely limited to the U.S.A. The English newspaper The Daily Express explained that for an English audience in a January 1928 edition:

“She talked cold turkey about sex. ‘Cold turkey’ means plain truth in America.”

There are many uses of the term in U.S. citations from the early 20th century. For example, this from The Oakland Tribune, August 1915:

“This letter talks cold turkey. It gets down to brass.”

In the state of drug withdrawal the addict’s blood is directed to the internal organs, leaving the skin white and with goose bumps. It has been suggested that this is what is alluded to by ‘cold turkey’. That seems doubtful. It is much more likely that the allusion is to the direct, no nonsense approach indicated by the earlier ‘plain speaking’ meaning of the term.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/96950.html

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Question by CAT: Which drugs is harder to come off Adderall or Benzos(xanax,ativan)?

Best answer:

Answer by Skee
I take both ativan and adderall for ADHD. Benzos and Stimulants are both very different drugs and have different “come off” feelings. Adderall is schedule 2, the benzos you listed are schedule 4. So the Feds think Adderall is significantly easier to abuse and poses a greater health risk. That’s a good start.

Personally: I wouldn’t want to “come off” of either. These drugs are prescribed for me to take daily as I have for the past 6 years.

Taking either regularly and then stopping will make “very bad things” happen. People will use words like “addiction” if you say it’s tough to quit. These are the same people who need to remember that nearly every anti-depressant (Prozac, etc) if suddenly quit being consumed cold turkey, suicide is not unheard of.

Perhaps you’re asking for what happens when one or the other wears off? With adderall you get irritable, hungry or not-hungry, slow, dense, useless. All the + that the adderall was giving you is now past 0 into the negatives temporarily. This would NOT be the time to take an SAT test. 🙂

Ativan… well, like any benzo, sudden withdrawl is life threatening.

There’s a fairly easy way to sum up how any drug is when you “come off” it: The opposite happens. ie: Take sudafed for a stuffed up nose a few days in a row, quit. Now your nose is really stuffed up!

You asked which is harder. I’d say Adderall. I need ativan for when I “come off” adderall, either instant release 4-6 hours, or XR putting it at 8-10 hours for the magic point in my day where, if there is no ativan, clicking “send” on that email is probably a BAD idea if you’ve got any emotions typed in. Better to focus on something else and come back to it.

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Question by Chantell L: What are some songs that are about drug addiction that have intense lyrics?
I’m doing an english essay and i have to have three sets of lyrics about drug addiction that i can write about. It would be great if there were some from different points of view, like some one who wants to stop, a mother or friend watching whats happening or some one who likes the thrills and thinks it’s a good thing etc….Thanks if you can help me out 🙂

Best answer:

Answer by Bud Light Girl
Cocaine by Eric Clapton.

Answer by Paul M
Cold Turkey – John Lennon
The Drugs Don’t Work – The Verve

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Question by Llesenia: Please help!!!! i want to help my boyfriend stop drinking so much?
well my boyfriend has been drinking since he was about 15 now he is 21, he’s drinking before when he was younger he told me was pretty heavy & also drug consumption, now he doesn’t do much drinking if he does drink its sometimes on the weekends when he hangs out with his friends. But my concern has always been that even though now he doesn’t drink as much but im thinking he has damaged his stomach to the point now he just started throwing up & there’s blood in the vomit, before he would tell me he had a stomach pain that he would get on the right side of his stomach by his belly button. That pain he told me went away but just last night after he drank & he is a heavy drinker when he drinks he told me after he took a nap he woke up feeling bad & was throwing up blood i want him stop i know i cant make him but i don’t want to lose him i love him very much with all my heart but i cant stand see him hurting himself more & it leading to worse.

Best answer:

Answer by A
He needs to see a doctor to treat the physical symptoms and then he should probably either join a program or talk to someone who can help him learn the tools to stop drinking. It sounds like he’s done a lot of damage to his body with all this drinking and he should stop if he wants to be healthy and keep on living. Excessive drinking is very bad and can destroy your liver and lead to many health problems in the future.
Vomiting blood isn’t a good sign, so get him checked out.

Answer by Durable Med
I’m a former nurse, and I’m going to give you perhaps the most well-kept secret in the alcohol and drug rehab business. I wish I had known about it while I was in the medical business.

This will not be what you expect, but go along with it till you finish. Because I’m going to give you an entirely different direction.
You are concerned for him, because he’s obviously doing himself damage, and it doesn’t look like he’s very well motivated to quit. And you’ve indicated that he had done “drugs” before. And when you say “leading to worse” the narcotics can be the next direction.

Ya know, you’re going after it all wrong. He is addicted because he’s trying to make up for a physical deficiency in endorphin production. To hell with trying to abstain, or talk therapy, or all the other efforts that have a dismal success rate. The two of you need to try a different path.

Seems like it’s past time to learn how to have his body make more personal morphine to avoid having to continue on the same endless loop.

Interested?

He is making a lot less of the personal morphines than most people make naturally, and don’t understand that narcotics, alcohol, self-inflicted injuries, etc. are a way of self-medicating. Even bulimia, because the body makes endorphins after vomiting. As well as running, binge-eating, bungi-cord jumping, fast cars, illicit sexual encounters, excessive gambling, kleptomania, etc.

He is likely only producing about a third of the endorphins that the “normal” person makes. But there’s a way to cause his body to make a lot more, and by using an alcohol rehab drug, Revia, to do it. Now, that’s the making of an Urban Legend, except for being true.

I’m gonna tell you a story. In the early 1980’s, the narcotics addicts were filling the New York jails, and if they were probated, they went right back to robbing, burglarizing, mugging, etc. to get their next fix. Well, a drug was approved, called Naltrexone. Trade name Revia, and others, depending on where it’s made, etc. You could give the addict the Revia at the local community center as the term for their probation. They swallow it down, and stay in the room for a half hour. After that, free to go. Because even if they were to throw up, it would be sufficiently absorbed.
The Revia is an oral version of naloxone (Narcan), which ties up the body’s narcotic receptor sites. A person in respiratory depression from a narcotics O.D., with enough to kill a horse, could be up and chatty within minutes after an I.V. push of Narcan.
So there was no point in taking any narcotics, the sites were not available. So the addicts were able to be probated. But, they HATED it. It made them feel terrible, without a way of getting better.

Anyway, a neurologist named Bihari was part of the naltrexone administration. He wanted to know why an addict would go right back to doing it, even though they ran the risk of “cold turkey” if they got caught. He hired a researcher, who found that addicts were only running a third of the endorphins of the ‘normal’ population, so the heroin etc. was a self medication.

Long story shorter, he found that if you give the addict a small portion of the naltrexone, at bed time, the body checks its supply around 2 in the morning, finds it at zero, and brings the endorphin level to as much as 5 times what it would have been. So the addicts were waking up WITH NO NEED FOR THE HEROIN.

So, how would you like to have your boyfriend’s own body making up to 5 times the morphine it does now? Would you like to have him no longer feeling the need for the alcohol? I’ll take your answer as a “yes” since you already asked the question.

Think about that, and read the article at the first site I’ve given, go from there. All he would have to do would be to ask his doctor for a one-month prescription for Revia, to “try it”. The Low Dose thing needs to stay his secret. And at the low dose protocol, a month’s supply actually becomes a full year’s worth, and costing maybe a dime a day.

But the Low Dose protocol will never be FDA approved, it would be too expensive for something that went generic over a decade ago.

And as an aside, does cancer cause problems for many of his family? Or autoimmune issues like Rheumatoid Arthritis? The endorphins are needed to show the immune system what’s supposed to be there and what’s not. Poor signalling means poor directions for the immune system.

I hope I’ve given you a reasonable direction.

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by mary hodder

Question by Amberly: What can my doctor do for ambien addiction?
I want to get off of ambien and sleep aids all together, but when I try to do it myself, I get extremely sick and can’t stop shaking and vomiting. If I make an appointment with my doctor, what can he do for me? I dont feel that my problem is big enough for “rehab”, but I definitely know that I need some sort of intervention.

Best answer:

Answer by Dexter Morgan
You can’t quit cold turkey. That is very bad for your body. You need to gradually reduce your intake and your body will become readjusted and no longer need it. Talk to your doctor about your desire to stop taking it, he will advise you how eventually quit. But you can’t just stop taking it all at once. Tell him the effects when you stop taking it. You need to GRADUALLY reduce your intake, most likely over a period of a month or two. I’m not a doctor but I know if you stop taking medication and try to quit cold turkey your body will react badly.

He can advise how to quit SAFELY and alternatives

Melatonin is a natural sleep aide that is non habit forming.

Answer by dot
No you wont need rehab for this
But you do need help from your doctor to do it
He will slowly and gradually get you off them
You are making yourself worse by trying this yourself

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