Kind of true really. They were originally going to do an episode in the style of ‘Intervention’ with the townspeople of South Park trying to get Towelie off drugs. I assume when they finally did it in Season 14 it was reused animation? Because I think they said they had already animated some scenes, and they realized then and said “Wow. We have nowhere to go with this!”
So they very quickly reworked the whole episode in a short amount of time (even shorter than they usually have to make an episode).
Bitch had it comin’.