Addiction recovery is often a long, hard, and painful process.
It may involve detox with grueling withdrawal symptoms, medications, and therapy sessions that force you to confront the darkest corners of your soul. As you battle the addiction that has invaded your brain, your behavior, and taken over your life, you're likely to be pulled away from everything that was once familiar to you. You may be lost. You may no longer know who you are, or who you could become.
Could a horse help you leave drugs and alcohol behind? Could a horse help you find a new path?
What actually happens in horse therapy for recovering addicts?
This is the way a well-set up equine therapy program works — it should be an integral part of a much wider recovery approach, and certainly not the sole treatment a recovering addict receives. Addicts working towards long-term remission described their experiences with horses as a "break from treatment"; something so natural that it didn't feel like the hard work done during the less pleasant aspects of recovery, even while they participated in the physical labor needed to care for horses.
Though studies that examine how effective horse therapy is in helping people break free from substance addictions tend to be small, they have been promising. Therapeutic contact with horses may lead to improved treatment outcomes as well as boosting morale and psychological wellbeing. But why?
Healing with horses: Why equine therapy nudges you on in the path towards addiction recovery
Horse therapy — which is much more than just riding a horse — offers a few benefits that aren't immediately obvious. Addicts might experience their time with horses as a welcome distraction and less boring or painful than the usual treatment routine in a rehab facility, but the therapy also takes people right out of their familiar environments to spend time in nature, focusing on the present moment and nothing beyond it. It typically takes place in tranquil surroundings, outdoors.
Horses are, in contrast to humans, always honest in their interactions with people. They don't lie or deceive. Recovering addicts can find themselves in the horse's behavior, too, as horses are always on guard and escape when startled, for instance. Many people participating in horse therapy, research suggests, find that this kind of projection allows them to better process their own feelings. Spending time with a horse, someone develops a relationship with a magnificient being, quite unlike anything they'd come across in daily life.
Not all the benefits of equine therapy have anything to do with horses themselves, however.
One former substance abuser who participated in horse-assisted learning shared that equine therapy was the one place where they were just a rider. Not an addict. Not a patient. But just another person at the stable. An equal in a world that they'd learned looks down on them. Horse therapy can, in this sense, help people in recovery from a substance use disorder find purpose as well as acceptance again, something that makes a huge positive difference.
Horse therapy is even, according to some healing addicts, the reason they're still here. That is because equine therapy helped them to:
- Free themselves from the guilt, regret, and resentment that plagued them.
- Find a new sense of identity and become more compassionate towards themselves.
- Become more independent.
- Gain something to look forward to.
- Find relief from fears about the future, at least temporarily.
The bottom line
Horses and humans have been living together for a very long time, and any rider would be able to share the joy of their relationship with a magnificent beast. Recovering addicts are no exception. Not all the benefits of equine therapy can directly be attributed to the horses themselves, however — the change of scenery, hard work, and responsibility play a big role in explaining why working with horses improve recovery rates and emotional stability. While horse therapy should never be a stand-alone approach to addiction recovery, almost anyone who has access to a program should seriously consider it.