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Can Swimming with Dolphins Really Cure Your Meth Addiction?

​ A short while ago, I was flipping through a psychology magazine and I noticed an ad for an addiction treatment facility that featured a glossy photo of a horse. Why a horse? ​That particular facility evidently uses “equine therapy” as part of its treatment regime, whatever that is.

A few pages later,  ​another facility boasted “dolphin therapy.” Further in the magazine I found a two-page spread touting the benefits of ​”wolf therapy” in treating addiction at another facility. Are treatment centers seriously touting that wolves and dolphins can cure your drug addiction?

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Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is not a new concept. Most of us can imagine how having a therapy dog wagging around a group session helps chill people out and enables them to open up (and there’s  ​plenty of ​research to ​back that ​up). But do we really think that Lassie can help us kick a crack addiction? And when expensive, in-patient treatment facilities are upgrading from a golden retriever to a tank full of dolphins, is it based on research evidence or just a marketing gimmick to stand out from the pack?

Research on the effects of AAT specifically in the treatment of substance dependency is limited, but there is a bit of scientific evidence to back up the claims addiction centers make. In 2009, Dr. Martin Wesley, dean of the School of Counseling at the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, was inspired to study the effects of animals on addiction therapy while working at a residential treatment center. He noticed how much his patients took an interest in the critters around the facility.

“I would see how the clients would respond to squirrels outside and the cats that would come by and even raccoons,” he said in a recent phone chat. “Someone would bring their dog and these hardened individuals would melt.”

Mitzi Ann, the therapy dog used in Wesley’s study. Image: Dr. Neresa Minatrea

So Wesley and some colleagues conducted  ​a peer-reviewed study, published in Anthrozöos, to see if introducing a therapy dog to group counselling sessions would have an impact on the patients’ relationship with and trust of their counsellor. It did. Patients in the group that had sessions with a therapy dog present rated their relationship with the therapist far more positively than those who had sessions without the test dog, an adorable Beagle mix named Mitzi Ann who sadly passed away earlier this year.

Other studies ​ show that a positive relations​hip with a therapist greatly improves an addict’s chances of sticking with treatment and getting sober. Wesley’s study also cites research that shows interacting with a therapy dog can ​lower heart rates, ​reduce blood pressure and cause the brain to release ​calming neurochemicals.

“I think a lot of it was just a feeling of acceptance of themselves. An animal has a way of accepting people. You can give them all the facts about your life and they still love you,” he said.

But Wesley was skeptical whether other animals would have the same effect and questioned the practicality of therapy with wild animals like wolves and dolphins.

“There’s something unique about dogs,” he said. “They seem to take great pleasure in doing a good job. Not just for the treats but for the laughter and the hugs and things like that.”

Many supporters of AAT in its more exotic forms base their beliefs on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. Joni Ogle is the director of the young adult program at ​ Promises Treatment Centers in California, the facility that offers wolf therapy. Promises has partnered with a local sanctuary, ​Wolf Connection, where wolves that have been raised in captivity (usually ill-advised pets that are abandoned post-puppydom) are given a home. Once a week, the residential patients at Promises trek up to Wolf Connection, help care for the wolves, hike, have a bonfire, and talk.

Ogle, a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Houston, started her gig at Promises 10 months ago. At that time, patients only visited the wolves every other week. She saw the impact it was having on the patients and bumped it up to weekly visits almost immediately.

“The patients are in their head so much trying to please their parents or their peers or score the next drug deal. It’s usually all about them. It really gets them out of their heads,” Ogle said in a recent phone conversation, citing a few examples of how the wolves open people up.

“We had this one client who was a tough guy, shut down and closed off,” she said. “He went to the sanctuary and three wolves were all over him. It broke through that tough exterior of his. They’d lick his arms, they’d nudge him.”

“He was dying to connect with people but he was so guarded and protected and defensive, he couldn’t,” she added. “The wolves really got that and were able to get in there and do something that humans struggle to do.”

After that, she says, the young man started to open up more with other residents and asked another patient who was further along in the program to be his mentor.

Ogle argued that the wolf therapy differs from, say, interacting with a therapy dog because of the novelty factor. It captures the residents’ attention and gets them more intrigued, she says.

“It has a unique ring to it,” she said. “Wolves? It sounds intimidating.”

Ogle doesn’t think it’s a gimmick. She’s convinced the interactions with the wolves are a unique experience that benefit the clients in a way other forms of AAT wouldn’t. But based on Promises’s choice of marketing material, it probably helps attracts clients, too.

Still, if the evidence—both anecdotal and scientific—indicates that AAT contributes positively to the treatment of addiction, then what’s the problem? It depends on the animal. When it comes to dolphins curing your alcoholism, some researchers say there’s actually a lot of potential harm.

Dr. Lori Marino, a biopsychologist at Emory University in Georgia and a colleague have done  ​extensive research debunking claims of the power of dolphin-assisted therapy, carefully analyzing all of the known evidence and poking holes in virtually every case.

I worry about people thinking that animal therapy is a panacea. It’s not, even under the best of circumstances.

There are a number of dolphin-assisted therapy centers that claim to provide treatment for everything from autism to arthritis, so the fact that it’s now bein​g marketed as a therapy for addiction didn’t surprise Marino.

She said it’s true most people experience positive results from swimming with dolphins because, well, they’re swimming with freaking dolphins (and also usually getting a lot of attention and encouragement). But the actual science exalting the benefits of dolphin-assisted therapy is lacking, and the drawbacks can be severe.

“From the human side, it’s bad because it gives people false hope and it’s very, very expensive. It preys upon quite desperate people,” she said on the phone. “With cases of substance abuse, it falls right into that category of preying or taking advantage of people who are in a difficult situation.”

Marino also said there are  ​numerous documented cases of people getting seriously injured while taking part in dolphin therapy. Not least of all, it’s stressful and dangerous for the dolphins, she said.

Yep, dolphin therapy is a thing.

“The big minus for dolphins is it perpetuates keeping dolphins in captivity or taking them from the wild, which causes increased stress on dolphins which leads to early mortality,” she said. “There’s no reason a dolphin would want people to get in the water and touch them or ride on them.”

But even if an addiction center is advertising a more palatable form of AAT—horses or dogs, for example—Marino still didn’t think there’s enough evidence to warrant them promoting it as a main source of therapy. 

The research shows AAT can have some positive impacts and complement the actual addiction treatment being offered, but petting a dog or riding a horse isn’t going to cure what ails you on its own. For Marino, if the animal component of a treatment program is their main marketing tool, that’s a problem.

“I worry about people thinking that animal therapy is a panacea. It’s not, even under the best of circumstances,” she said. 

What if that’s the only medicine the center is selling? “It clearly is a gimmick,” Marino said. “It’s just completely false advertising. It’s a scam.”