It’s been a long, tragic road for two blind alcoholic bears in the town of Sochi, Russia, that have spent their lives in a squalid cage as part of a restaurant attraction.

For 20 years, the animals were used as entertainment for diners. Patrons would pay to give the bears beer and garbage and shine car headlights in their eyes (which led to the blindness).

(Photo: Courtesy Big Hearts Foundation)

But now the pair is on the path to rehab. The bears have been removed from their cramped, filthy surroundings and are off the sauce, thanks in part to Brigitte Bardot’s animal rights group.

The bears’ plight first made international headlines last winter during the Sochi Winter Olympics. Reports on the alcoholic bears spurred animal-rights rallies against their owner, Dzheniks Uzaroshvili. Earlier this month a court ordered him to give them up.

Uzaroshvili denied being cruel to the bears but told journalists, “Beer is good for the bears because of the Sochi climate.”

Soon after the ruling, U.K.-based animal rights group Big Hearts Foundation started searching for a new home for the bears.

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“The court order is there to take them away, but there is nowhere to put them,” the foundation’s director, Anna Kogan, said in a statement. All Russian zoos are refusing to take in the alcoholic bears, as they would need special detox treatment.

But a Romanian bear sanctuary has volunteered to take the troubled animals, and the Brigitte Bardot Foundation offered to pay to move them.

Kogan said the bears have a good chance of recovery in their new home.

“The people there have worked with dancing bears who had similar problems…it can be done,” Kogan said.