Pet-Friendly Rehabs: How Animals Can Aid Your Addiction Treatment

Completing primary addiction treatment is challenging, even in the best of circumstances. To smooth your path to recovery, addiction specialists may use a range of medication and therapy-based options. One option that’s gained popularity in recent years is pet therapy, or animal-assisted therapy (AAT). This type of treatment helps improve your chances of success by cultivating the strong emotional bonds that often form between people and animals. In rehab, pets can create a feeling of familiarity and comfort, soothe raw emotions, calm your mind and even help you open up to your therapists—all of which is a significant boon to your recovery progress.

What Is Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT)?

Animal-assisted therapy is the use of animals to enhance healing processes. Used in a variety of therapeutic settings, AAT has a number of benefits, which include:

• Releasing endorphins, producing a calming effect on the mind
• Lowering heart rate and blood pressure
• Reducing anxiety, anger, and aggression
• Improving feelings of self-worth
• Enhancing trust between clients and counselors
• Fostering a sense of purpose
• Increasing physical activity and socialization

Dogs and cats are the most commonly employed therapy animals, but several rehabs offer programs such as equine therapy and even dolphin therapy! In fact, the benefits of AAT aren’t exclusive to any specific type of animal—it’s the companionship and unconditional love that counts.

According to a study published by the US National Library of Medicine, “It has been suggested that AAT might help to develop the therapeutic relationship between patients and healthcare professionals¹, and could improve the therapeutic atmosphere; animals in AAT can act as social facilitators, social modulators, and amplifiers of emotional reactivity.” Another advantage of pet therapy is that it works well for people with a wide range of disorders and personal backgrounds—its core benefits are largely universal.

The Benefits of Pet Therapy in Rehab

Interacting with pets has a calming effect—one that’s surely welcome during the early days of addiction treatment when dealing with stress, frustrations, and unfamiliar surroundings can test the limits of your willpower. Animals improve your mental state and provide you with a much-needed sense of comfort and security, helping you get settled into your program and adding an extra layer of support.

Pets also release feel-good chemicals in your brain (which get depleted over the course of an addiction), such as the “love hormone” oxytocin, enhancing your ability to connect with others. This not only helps you open up more easily in therapy but establishes positive emotional patterns you can take with you well into recovery.

It’s not just human-to-animal connections that are established during AAT; pets can strengthen human-to-human bonds, too. A study on companion animals as a conduit for getting to know people² published in the journal PLoS One found that people who walked their dogs were far more likely to know their neighbors than non-pet owners. In fact, pet owners were 60% more likely to get to know people in their neighborhoods they hadn’t known before. As establishing new, non-using friends is a key component of successful recovery, pet companionship can go a long way in maintaining sobriety. And the increased physical activity that comes along with it isn’t bad, either—it can help you maintain a healthy weight, keep your blood pressure in check and keep your stress levels under control.