Can virtual reality help drug addicts recover? Researchers from SFU aim to find out – CBC.ca

A recoveringcocaine addict walks into a room where the party is in full swing: drinks are flowing, music is pulsing and drugs are being passed around. A person approaches, offering coke.

It's a situation loaded with triggers for the addict, which is exactly the point.

It's also a situation that this time doesn't exist in any real way.

The room, the party and the cocaine are all simulated,and theperson offering the drugs anavatar. All have beencreated by a team of virtual reality specialists tasked with building a worst casescenario for the addict as a way to gauge whethertreatment is in fact working.

Virtual reality is a computer generated, three-dimensional environment that is projected inside a headset. It's supposed be an immersive experience that mimics reality. (Shutterstock / Wayne0216)

Inthe next two months, 60 students enrolled at Surrey's John Volken Academy, a long-term residential addictions treatment centre, will be strapping on VR headsets and immersing themselves in virtual situations that have been tailor-made for their personal experiences and addiction issues.

The cutting edge program is being led by SFU professorFaranakFarzan, chair in technology innovations for youth addiction recovery.

"They clients come to the [John VolkenAcademy] to recover from their bad habits but after twoyears they have to go back and live their lives," said Farzan.

"We're hoping to use virtual reality to slowly introduce environmental cues that they were exposed to back home, but in a very safe environmentto assess where they are in terms of relapse or giving into their impulses."

The project is still in the start-up phase withresearchers interviewing the students to gather information to create apersonalized VR environment.

"If someone is taking opioids for pain management for instance, my guess is the environment they're using in is much different than someone who is using cocaine. We don't want to put them in the same context, it wouldn'tmake sense,"saidFarzan.

"Weneed to...find out what they are prone to. Itcould be a party for someone, but it could be a school yard for someoneelse. And it could be at home in the back yard for another individual."

Virtual reality has long been talked about as potentially useful in addictions therapy, but the technology has only recently become "real feeling" enoughto be considered a serious tool.

And because the area of study is so new, researchers still need to answer what Farzan describes as the "million dollar question" in VR application: willan addict's behaviour in the virtual world transfer to real life?

"This is what we are trying to understand," she said. "Right now we're designing what makes intuitive sense and rolling that out. But at the end of the day we need also to run randomized controlled trials."

60 recovering drug and alcohol addicts from the John Volken Academy in Surrey will participate in the virtual reality project. (CBC)

John Volkenhas made a five-year commitment to the research, and hopes to expand the VR program to his two addiction treatment centres in the United States.

"The students are excited about it because they feel they're gettingsome real professional help," he said.

"The key part here is that we're working with people who have lived through addiction," said Farzan. "We're not sitting in our research labs trying to design something based just on what we think."

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Can virtual reality help drug addicts recover? Researchers from SFU aim to find out - CBC.ca