Smack Addict Elephant Goes Bezerk During Cold Turkey

Good Christ. Can you even begin to imagine what sort of horrors a heroin-addicted elephant could unleash when it's forced to go through cold turkey withdrawals?

Incredible :

A once drug-addled elephant fed heroin-laced bananas by illegal traders will soon return to the wild after being weaned off his addiction through methadone and round-the-clock care.

"Big Brother", a bull elephant that once "lived peacefully" with his herd near the China-Myanmar border in Yunnan province, was caught by traders in 2005, the China Daily said on Thursday.

"To control it so that it could lead the herd to where they wanted, the traders kept feeding it bananas laced with drugs," the paper said.

...Big Brother had developed a raging heroin addiction and posed a danger to people if denied its fix, the paper said, citing police.

A drooling and twitching Big Brother had to be transported to a special park in the neighbouring island province of Hainan for treatment, after cold turkey proved so tortuous at a local centre that "even its iron chain could not contain it", the paper said.

It took a year to slowly wean the elephant off its favourite drug. That process apparently involved lots of bathing, massage and methadone. The elephant is now being returned to the wild. Wiser for a less than wonderful encounter with humanity.

Good thing they sorted out this junkie when they did, before he started trying to climb through windows to steal DVD players.