• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 25, 2025

Animals getting wasted is a new front in the war on drugs, according to a new series coming next week on Discovery Channel.

This searing, three-part series rips the lid off a growing scourge of drug and alcohol abuse sweeping the animal kingdom.

Titled “Animals on Drugs,” the show premieres Monday night on Discovery with three back-to-back, one-hour episodes starting at 8 p.m. Eastern.

In this show, you will witness the heartbreaking spectacle of alligators hooked on meth, drunken bears and the famed “cocaine hippos” of Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

With wildlife biologist and fearless adventurer Forrest Galante as your guide, you get to come along on a deep dive into “the bizarre and shocking world of animals under the influence,” says Discovery.

In Episode One, it’s a race against time as Galante leads the charge to steer aggressive Florida alligators known as “meth gators” to alligator rehab before it’s too late.

The drug-addled reptiles live in swampy waterways that are known to law enforcement as smuggling routes for drug traffickers.

As a result of this activity, Galante believes these wetlands are swimming in methamphetamine and fentanyl left behind by traffickers, or flushed down nearby toilets to make their way into this watery alligator habitat.

The vise-jawed creatures then ingest the drug-filled waters, says Galante, who cites as evidence patterns of increased aggressive behavior of the local gators in their encounters with humans.

Humans are the source of the substances that are now wreaking havoc in the wild populations of swamps and woodlands, Discovery says.

Escobar was said to have made cocaine available to his pet hippos, which were part of a menagerie of exotic species assembled by the drug kingpin in the peak years of his ill-gotten wealth.

Years later, after his personal compound was abandoned, the hippos escaped and propagated, “becoming a dangerous and deadly invasive species,” says a Discovery press release.

Also on the upswing: Drunk bears. According to this show, bear home invasions are increasing in communities where the spread of human populations has disrupted ursine habitats.

Increasingly, the network says, the bears are going in search of not only food, “but booze and marijuana edibles to feed their cravings” for Doritos and Oreos. 

“Animals on Drugs” combines “boots-on-the-ground investigation and cutting-edge science to track these creatures, uncover how they got hooked, what it means for their ecosystems and how we can help them recover before it’s too late!” says the press release.

The show is one of five new and returning series coming to Discovery next week starting on Sunday with the “Naked and Afraid” spinoff “Naked and Afraid: Apocalypse!”

Discovery bills the show as the toughest challenge yet for these unclothed survivalists as they are abandoned in regions of South Africa known for extreme heat, drought, lions and black mamba snakes -- all without food, water, clothes and sunblock.

Also starting Sunday: A new season of the weather-disaster series “In the Eye of the Storm,” including the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.

Next Tuesday, it’s the return of “Mud Madness,” the series that showcases the mud-splattered, “off-road subculture of extreme UTV and ATV mud racing,” says Discovery.

Then it’s on to yet another season of the high seas, crab fishing adventure series “Deadliest Catch,” coming next Friday.