What is art therapy, and how does it help in addiction recovery?

In addiction recovery it is used to reach the feelings a drink or a pill used to keep quiet.

You need no skill in art. In South Africa it is one of four arts therapies, next to music, drama and dance movement therapy. At Renewed Life Center in Lakeside, Cape Town, it is one of the weekday groups, next to one-to-one sessions with your own counsellor.

What is art therapy?

The British Association of Art Therapists describes it as a form of psychotherapy delivered by trained art therapists. In a session the making comes first: you put something on paper or into clay, nobody grades it, and the conversation starts from what is in front of you. In the Association’s words, it “aims to reduce distress and improve social, emotional and mental health by promoting insight, self-compassion and a sense of agency and self-worth”¹.

The therapist sets the materials and the frame, then works with what comes up on the page and in the conversation around it. It can be done one to one, with family or in a group, where drawing next to someone often feels easier than talking across a circle at them. Pencil, paint, collage and clay are the usual materials.

Art therapy for addiction recovery: how does it help?

In addiction recovery, art therapy gives shape to what drives the using, so it can be worked on in therapy. The research for addiction is still modest, mostly small case series, so it belongs inside a treatment plan rather than in place of one. The benefits of art therapy in addiction treatment that therapists work towards include:

• naming a feeling without reaching for a substance to switch it off;
• new ways to handle stress, anxiety and the evening when the craving comes;
• self-awareness, and self-esteem rebuilt from something you made yourself;
• easier communication with the group, the therapist and, later, the family;
• a way into old hurt at your own pace, with a therapist;
• a new interest that fills the hours the drinking or using used to take.

What does the research say about art therapy?

The evidence for art therapy is strongest for depression: a 2026 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychiatry pooled 19 studies covering 997 patients with depression and found a standardised mean difference of 0.53 for depressive symptoms, favouring art therapy³, Joschko and colleagues report. For PTSD, a 2025 meta-analysis of creative arts therapies found a significant reduction in symptoms (SMD -1.98)⁴, though from few studies that differed a lot, so it is an encouraging sign rather than a settled result.

Studies of art therapy for addiction itself are few: mostly case series, such as two small groups of adults in outpatient treatment. The craving data come from music, a separate arts therapy: a Cochrane review found that music therapy added to standard care likely reduces craving in adults in detox and rehab, with low-to-moderate confidence. At Renewed Life Center art therapy is one part of a plan built on the talking therapies: CBT, DBT, family therapy and 12-step groups are among the interventions that the WHO and UNODC international standards for treating drug use disorders (2020)⁷ list as having proved effective.

Why does making something help, when talking about it never did?

Making something helps because the drinking or using often covers something that never had words. For many people it began as a way to cope with something older: a home where feelings were never spoken about, or a death nobody mourned out loud. Experience like that is often hard to put into words, and for many people “just talk about it” stalls long before the wish to get better does. For some of them, a drawing or a shape pressed into clay can get past that wall.

Stop the drinking and leave the reason untreated, and the same pull is waiting on the first bad day. So at Renewed Life Center the reason is treated from the first month. Ruby Weber, the psychologist who heads psychology at the centre, has more than twenty years in the addictions field with South African and international clients. Art therapy runs alongside EMDR and TRE for trauma, schema therapy for the old patterns, and dual diagnosis treatment when depression or anxiety sits under the drinking.

What families notice first

Families usually see the need before the person does. Often it looks like this:

• He goes quiet the moment anyone asks how he really is, and pours another drink instead.
• She has seen three counsellors, and every session ends with “I don’t know what to say.”
• Sleeping tablets or painkillers started for a reason, and stayed long after it.

You do not need proof to write to us, and you can write on someone else’s behalf, before they have agreed to come. Tell us what you are seeing, and we will tell you what we would suggest. Art therapy is part of the weekday group programme, so the person you are worried about does not need the right words, or any skill in art, to take part.

How does art therapy complement other addiction treatments?

Art therapy complements CBT, DBT and the other talking therapies by bringing up the material they then work on: the motive, the trigger, the temptation you had not noticed. Therapists often ask people to draw things like these:

• the hour before the first drink, and what was happening in the room;
• the place where the using happened, and who else was there;
• the craving itself, as a shape or a colour;
• a trigger they did not know they had until it turned up on the page.

The aim is to turn what lands on the page into words, so a trigger found with a pencil can get a plan.

Art therapy also builds trust in a group: people share a picture before they share a story, and the picture does the hard part of opening up.

Where does art therapy sit among rehabilitation options for substance abuse?

Art therapy works inside the other methods, not instead of them. Many families looking at rehabilitation options for substance abuse stop at detox, but recovery takes more than stopping. A full plan of substance abuse treatment usually has these parts:

• medical detox, to stop safely when the body depends on alcohol or pills;
• residential drug rehabilitation or alcohol rehab, where you live in for months and therapy runs every weekday;
• individual therapy, CBT and DBT, for the thinking and the urges;
• trauma therapy and dual diagnosis treatment, for what sits under the using;
• family therapy and support, because addiction happens to the whole family;
• creative and body-based work: art therapy, somatic therapy and yoga;
• 12-step work and, after the stay, sober living and aftercare.

At Renewed Life Center all of this happens in one house in Lakeside, and art therapy is one part of it.

What a week with art therapy looks like

At Renewed Life Center, art therapy is one of the afternoon groups in the weekday programme from the first month, in a week that also has schema therapy, DBT, a process group, relapse prevention and one-to-one sessions with your own counsellor. Step work and 12-step meetings come later in the day, and on Saturdays the group goes out, sometimes to a pottery workshop.

Between them, the people who will work with you have decades in this field, and several are in recovery themselves, so the craving you draw is one they know from the inside. Nikki Edwards leads the programme as Programme Director and Clinical Manager and has been in recovery for 11 years; John Roberts, Senior Recovery Specialist and Operations Manager, has 39 years of personal recovery. Dr John Wulz, our GP, examines you after you arrive.

Does art therapy carry on after rehab?

Art therapy carries on past the first month, and most clients stay a second month. The first month is about getting stable; the second goes deeper into trauma, relationships and identity, with art therapy still on the timetable next to IFS, yoga and beach walks. After that comes the Recovery Integration Programme, still living with us but going out on your own in the afternoons, or sober living, where you work or study by day and can still join the groups. Every discharge includes a written relapse-prevention plan built for your home, and we keep in touch with former clients. A sketchbook at home is worth keeping for the bad evenings.

What forms does art therapy take?

Art therapy ranges from free drawing in a notebook to structured exercises with a set theme, and therapists draw on a few well-known approaches. Three of them come up most often.

Gestalt method

You make the image and talk while you make it. The therapist asks what the shape or colour is doing, and the conversation goes deeper because it starts from something in front of you.

Active imagination

You make whatever comes, with no theme. The therapist watches and then asks questions that link the picture to what you think and feel.

Third hand

The therapist holds the brush and you direct it. Telling someone else what to draw lets you say things indirectly, which helps people who freeze in front of a blank page.

How do you start art therapy with us?

Our house is in Lakeside, a residential suburb of Cape Town, with the mountain behind the house and the beach a short drive away. Clients from abroad are met at Cape Town airport. To start, one conversation is enough.

Nobody arrives with the right words, and art therapy exists partly for that reason. The first message can be just as rough: “I don’t know where to start” is enough.

Not sure how to put it into words? Ask how art therapy fits your plan.Not sure how to put it into words? Call +27 79 880 0045, free and confidential.

Frequently asked questions

Does everyone benefit from art therapy?

People get different things from it: some find their way in through the clay, others through the talk afterwards. Art therapy runs next to individual therapy and the other groups, so nobody depends on one method.

How much does art therapy cost?

At Renewed Life Center art therapy is one of the weekday groups, and group therapy comes with the programme, so it is not a separate session you book. The fee depends on the programme and how long you stay; we give it on the free first call and send it in writing the same day.

Do you need to be good at art to benefit from art therapy?

No. “You do not need to be skilled in art to benefit from art therapy,” the British Association of Art Therapists states. The value sits in making something and in what comes up while you do it, not in how it looks.

Is art therapy the same as an art class?

No. An art class teaches technique. In art therapy the same materials serve treatment: what you make becomes something to talk about, and the aim is what you understand about yourself, not a better picture.

Can I stop drinking or taking pills on my own first?

Not if you drink every day or take sleeping tablets, benzos or painkillers daily: do not stop suddenly on your own. Write to us before you cut down, say what you take and how often, and we will go through the next steps for treatment with you. A doctor examines you after you arrive, and if you need a medical detox, our medical team runs it.

Where can I get art therapy for addiction in Cape Town?

At Renewed Life Center, a residential rehabilitation centre in Lakeside, art therapy runs as one of the weekday groups in the residential programme, alongside individual therapy, trauma work and the 12-step programme. If you cannot live in, our outpatient programme runs the same weekday groups, art therapy included, and you sleep at home. Ask us how it would fit your plan.