episode / cold turkey

Reader's Digest 2月号は発行100年を記念する特集で古い記事から選ばれた内容が多かった。

"Cigarettes were killing me. I had a chronic hacking cough and never clear my throat. When I had a scary heart episode, to calm my self I had a smoke. Crazy, huh? Then my Reader's Digest arrived, with an article that suggested that to quit smoking, you should breath deeply, as if you were taking a draw off a cigarette. It worked! I stopped cold turkey that day. I'm sure it saved my life."

"episode" は出来事などにしか使われないと思っていましたが、上記の例では病気に関係がありますね。辞書を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: A finite period in which someone is affected by a specified illness.: ‘acute psychotic episodes’
・Collins Dictionary: An episode of an illness is short period in which a person who suffers from it is affected by it particularly badly.: The new drug lessens the severity of pneumonia episodes.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a sudden short period in which someone suffers the effects of a physical or mental illness: I had an episode of severe chest pain.

なるほど、長い期間ではなく短い期間の事柄であることが "episode" の共通の意味なのですね。
引用文の後半に出てきた "cold turkey" は既に取り上げた表現と思いましたが記録がありません。一応こちらの意味も辞書から引用して置きます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: The abrupt and complete cessation of taking a drug to which one is addicted.: Unlike smoking, you can't go cold turkey with food.’
・Collins Dictionary: Cold turkey is the unpleasant physical reaction that people experience when they suddenly stop taking a drug that they have become addicted to.: The quickest way to get her off the drug was to let her go cold turkey.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: the period of extreme suffering that comes immediately after a person has stopped taking a drug on which they depend: Six years ago she went cold turkey on (= stopped completely) a three-pack-a-day smoking habit.