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No more junk in their trunks: Heroin-addict elephants go cold turkey

Four elephants who got hooked on opium-laced bananas have gone cold turkey after animal welfare experts weaned them off the drug with the replacement drug methadone, over the period of a year.

Smugglers used the animals to transport huge amounts of the drug between China and Myanmar (Burma), feeding them the opiate to help make them adhere to orders.


After the elephants were released from their ordeal, sanctuary staff began to notice their unusually restless and aggressive manner.

Workers at the Wild Elephant Valley in Yunnan Province, China, ran tests and found that four out of nine elephants rescued.

Source: CEN
Source: CEN

Each of the four elephants was placed into a lengthy course of rehab - and now the handlers have announced that they have all finally kicked the habit.

In fact, they have now been reintroduced back into the wild to roam free in wild herds.

Chen Jiming, an elephant breeder who helped with the elephants’ rehabilitation said: ‘It’s been a long battle but we can safely say that they are now reintegrated into elephant society and in some cases even have families of their own.'

The trainers had never had to deal with an elephant’s addiction such as this previously they decided to use methadone, the same method of treatment as used to wean humans off heroin.

Source: CEN
Source: CEN

It was administered year-long in slowly-diminishing quantities as an opiate-replacement, albeit without the associated buzz.

Mr Chen added: 'The elephants need at least five times more methadone than a human being would need at the start, and then we slowly reduced that until they no longer needed it.

'It is every bit as hard for the elephants to go through the cold turkey regime as it is for humans.'

The four elephants now live in the forests of south-western China, in a protected area of Yunnan Province among around another 250 wild elephants.

Source: CEN
Source: CEN