Can Virtual Reality Treat Addiction?
Drug Week Popular ScienceResearchers are plugging in smokers, alcoholics, and even crack addicts to expose them to a relapse environment--and teach them how to deal with it. Will it work? When the addicts enter the room, they haven't met the people inside. They've never been there before, but the setting is familiar, and so is the pipe on the table, or the bottles of booze on the ground. Soon enough, someone's offering them a hit, or a drug deal's going down right in front of them. They've been trying to get better--that's why they're doing this--but now they have cravings. It's about then that a voice instructs them to put down the joystick and look around the room without speaking, "allowing that drug craving to come and go like a wave." The voice asks them periodically to rate their cravings as, after a couple minutes, they start to relax. The...