Where did the phrase "seeing pink elephants" originate?

"Seeing pink elephants", a euphemism for drunken hallucination caused by delirium tremens.

A false premise from the popular syllogism "All elephants are pink. Nellie is an elephant. Nellie is pink."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Elephant

"Seeing pink elephants" is a euphemism for drunken hallucination caused by delirium tremens.

* Jack London, describing one sort of alcoholic in the autobiographical John Barleycorn, writes that he "is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. He is the type that gives rise to the jokes in the funny papers."

A slight variation on the pink elephant appeared in Punch Trunk, a 1953 Looney Tunes cartoon, in which a drunk spots a tiny (but grey) elephant, looks at his watch, and proclaims to the elephant "You're late!" He then staggers away, commenting "He always used to be pink."

http://www.answers.com/Seeing%20pink%20elephants

The elephants aren't pink they're more of a light purple

To see pink elephants ("hallucinate from alcoholism") [was] first recorded 1913 in Jack London's "John Barleycorn." Source:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pink

I always thought it was seeing yellow submarines and angry Japanese businessmen holding plates of sushi. :P

Drunk men used to often hallucinate about pink elephants. Also in the Disney Movie Dumbo (1941), there is a scene where Dumbo and his friend accidentally get drunk and see Pink elephants dancing. The scene is called "Pink elephants on parade".