Go cold turkey, for god's sake!

A friend who attended a workshop of Overeaters Anonymous says it is possible for any ravenous soul to eat much less than he or she usually does. “Even for you,” he said, “and the break really helps.”
    
Well, in this world, there are rehab clinics and therapy centres with both ordinary and fancy names to wean you or anyone away from anything and everything irrespective of age and addiction.

They are for everybody, from sweettoothed 75-plus-year-olds to 40-ish alcoholics to teenaged brownsugar addicts to Facebook-crazy primary schoolchildren.
    
The idea of such we-help-you-livebetter entities is to help you take a recess amid excesses in the hope that it helps you stay in control of your work and life in the long run.

It is true that all this rehab business has been on for a long time now, but it never goes out of fashion for obvious reasons.
    
One expression that is in sync with changing realities and times is the immensely likeable “going cold turkey”. Which means if you are addicted to heroin, instead of confessing you want to go to a rehab unit, you could say, “I want to go heroin cold turkey”.

School kids could proudly declare, “We plan to go social media cold turkey” if they wish to keep off keyboard or mouse or smart phones for three-four days or even a week.
    
The fact is cold turkey is no longer associated with food, drinks, drugs, sex and related things alone. You could go “work cold turkey”, and detoxify your officeclouded mind, unwind, recharge your live-positive batteries, stabilise blood pressure and return, cleansed!

In fact, companies and governments must insist that their employees go work cold turkey once in a while, especially immediately after intense bouts of hard work.
    
Going cold turkey for religious reasons is as old as religions or maybe, older. In fact, religious prohibitions may have helped people preserve their faith, identity and health.

Research shows that any religious ban or temporary refrain on consumption and action has practical considerations as well. Our prophets seemed to have taken into account everything from weather to hygiene to welfare of their people before writing edicts on dos and don’ts.

Since the time we started recording history, physicians across faiths have advised fasting as a therapy to feel better and look better.
    
Another friend who attended a Vipassana course near Delhi rightly pointed out that going cold turkey is possible without even realising it. Of course, there are myriad ways to distract oneself and go cold turkey.

Politicians contesting elections do that. A hard day’s night gets a new meaning in poll campaigning which, ironically, is one of the many ways our politicians keep fit.
    
To be sure, going cold turkey or being forced to do that is as old as the human race. Later when kingdoms emerged, brothers asked brothers to go kingdom cold turkey.

The list of examples is endless even in regimes that had no emperors. Comrade Mao Zedong himself had forced Deng Xiaoping to go politics cold turkey and banished him to China’s hinterland.
    
To cut a long story short, one should not feel that going cold turkey, of one’s own volition or by force, is always bad.

When people in democracies vote unpopular governments out of power, what they do is to push their governments to go government cold turkey.

It is good to go cold turkey despite the risk of delirium tremens and irrespective of whether the case is of overwork or drug addiction or political one-upmanship or inefficiency.One constantly feels that some people must go profession cold turkey.

A few names that crop up are of V S Naipaul who should be told to go writing cold turkey; Nicholas Sarkozy who should be asked to go politics cold turkey and Malayalam film stars Mohan Lal and Mammooty who should go acting cold turkey.

Oh! How could one miss him? Will someone advise Suresh Kalmadi to go sports management cold turkey, please?