Yes there are various "recipes" for soaks for green wood turnings from alcohol to liquid detergent. Drying a turning is much different from drying slabs since you rough turn the bowl to ~ 1/2" wall thickness while fresh green, air dry it for 6 to 12 months from there, then finish turning it after it's dry. Some put it in a paper bag with the shavings, others just set it on a workshop shelf. Many of the blanks crack or badly distort. I have an article I will try some time when I have enough green wood to experiment on where you dry the rough turning in the microwave in stages in less than an hour. But the difference is that with the thin wall the moisture can move thru easily, and many of the cells have been cut thru. If you cut the logs crosswise rather than lengthwise they too would dry much quicker, but wouldn't be much good for bed floors.
I buy my boards for cabinetmaking kiln dried, that way I can select the exact ones I want, and I know it won't split or move a lot. Plus I don't have the space to store wood for drying and I don't want to wait a couple years to build something. Personally I don't find hickory a terribly attractive cabinet wood, pale in color with a pronounced open grain, depending on how it's been sawn, looks pretty much like ash or white oak (think of a baseball bat, most are made of hickory, as are axe and sledge hammer handles). Most hickory you see in commercial cabinets has been stained and the grain filled. It's readily available and not very expensive. There used to be a lot of hardwood mills and dealers in NC when furniture manufacturing was done here and furniture was made from real wood, but a lot of the big ones closed down when most furniture started being made overseas from pressed paper and composition.