It turns out that video can be an effective tool in the treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs) such as alcohol use disorder (AUD), opioid use disorder (OUD), and cannabis use disorder (CUD).

Recently, Stanford University conducted a large, randomized trial to see if a short, wordless video could change people’s opinions about addiction. The video was the idea of Dr. Maya Adam, director of Health Media Innovation Lab at the Stanford School of Medicine and also an associate professor in the pediatrics department.

Dr. Adam worked with Stanford’s Office of Communication to get the video made, including adding a musical soundtrack. The video features a young fish who finds a substance that blisses him out. He keeps sucking on it, even though he’s told not to, until he spends all his time looking for the substance, and it barely blisses him at all:

At that point, the little fish is hooked. This is illustrated with a literal hook that snags the young fish and starts reeling him in. He is rescued by an older fish, but not without the hook causing a scar. The older fish has a similar scar.

The video illustrates an inexperienced fish getting mesmerized by a substance to the point of self-injury. He is rescued by an older fish who is himself a substance abuse survivor. The goal of the video, according to a Q&A with Dr. Adam in MedicalXpress, is to “reduce stigma toward people with drug and alcohol use disorders.”

To find out if it worked, researchers enlisted 13,397 participants from three countries: the U.K., the U.S., and South Africa. After watching the two-minute and 40-second video, they answered a series of questions to assess addiction stigma. A control group was given an educational text about stigma that was also given to those watching the video.

Two weeks later, 92% of the original group returned for a second round of testing. Researchers found the following results:

• 9% reduction in stigma for the video vs. the text
• 4% reduction in stigma two weeks later
• 6% reduction in stigma for watching the video without sound
• 2% reduction in stigma for the silent version two weeks later

The impacts are not large, but they are measurable. The research is based on a single viewing, but the goal is to use donated advertising space to result in multiple viewings while people are engaged in social media. The video might have made more sense if the little fish was stressed when using the substance; the majority of people in addiction treatment for substance abuse were abused as children.

Stanford’s Children’s Hospital was also involved in a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers on the use of telemedicine in addiction treatment that appeared in the International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications. That study asked 363 organizations that treat substance use disorders to share how they are using telemedicine.

Their interest in telemedicine was largely organization-focused rather than patient-focused. For example, the top three desired features were computerized screening and assessment, telephone-based recovery supports, and telephone-based therapy. SUD treatment providers were least interested in mobile apps for post-treatment recovery and recovery support chats.

In a disappointing conclusion, researchers found that only 7.4% of SUD treatment providers were “innovators” using a range of technologies, whereas 64.7% were deemed “low-tech” providers with low overall technology use. Perhaps Dr. Adam’s team could come up with a video for addiction treatment providers to show how the big fish use technology to achieve their goals faster?

I’ll end this brief look at using video in addiction treatment with a study conducted by the Rhode Island Department of Corrections on using an eight-minute video to increase the use of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD).

The small sample size included 80 incarcerated participants, with 93% of them identifying as male. The video was built from incarcerated individuals speaking about their experiences using MOUD and was “designed to reduce MOUD-related stigma.” The study found significant improvements in both knowledge of MOUD and attitudes about people using MOUD.

It seems that, for the moment, the use of video in addiction treatment is geared mostly to changing attitudes rather than therapeutic relief. The videos make the administration of addiction treatment easier but are not, themselves, treating the patient. There are videos being used to treat patients suffering from alcohol use disorder (AUD), and we’ll examine how well those work in a future post.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published September 2, 2026.

Sources:

“Short, animated storytelling social contact videos reduce addiction stigma in the UK, USA, and South Africa: a randomised controlled trial of 13,397 participants,” eClinicalMedicine, August 19, 2026.

“Q&A: Short animation changes how people see addiction,” MedicalXpress, August 24, 2026.

“Use of Telemedicine in Addiction Treatment: Current Practices and Organizational Implementation Characteristics,” International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications, March 11, 2018.

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