Virtual reality helps with addiction treatment

Virtual reality involves the use of head-mounted displays to immerse individuals in a virtual world. Early attempts to introduce virtual reality to the home market were unsuccessful due to its propensity to trigger motion sickness in users and the prohibitive cost of the equipment. However, in recent years, virtual reality has become much more accessible, both to gamers in the at-home market and to scientific researchers, allowing new applications for VR to open up. This is due to the reduction in costs of the technology and the refinement of the tech to eradicate issues like motion sickness. One promising use for VR is using virtual reality for addiction treatment.

The Integration of VR in Addiction Treatment

The use of virtual reality in addiction treatment needs to be administered by trained professionals with specific goals. Specialists will guide individuals through virtual experiences tailored to them to reach evidence-based outcomes. Three areas of treatment show a lot of promise – exposure therapy, enhancing traditional therapeutic methods such as CBT and peer support, and stress management. We’re going to dive into all three in more detail.

Exposure Therapy – Addressing Cravings and Triggers

A 2020 systematic review of the use of VR to treat cue cravings1 showed that VR is effective in triggering cravings in users in response to cues. By successfully triggering cravings in individuals, the user can then be helped to navigate and manage the unpleasant sensations of cravings and withdrawal in a safe, controlled environment. By doing this, scientists believe they can exploit neuroplasticity to induce changes in the brain.

What is Neuroplasticity? Promoting Neuroplasticity and Cognitive Changes

Drug and alcohol addiction rewires the brain’s reward pathways, making withdrawal and detox a difficult process. Fortunately, we know that the brain can be rewired. This rewiring process is called ‘neuroplasticity’. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to open up new connections and shut off old, redundant ones when repeatedly exposed to new stimuli.

A classic study on brain plasticity showed that London cab drivers who have to memorise London’s complicated street layout have more grey matter in their hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for long-term memory and spatial awareness. Researchers hope that this rewiring can help with drug and alcohol recovery by reconfiguring the brain’s reward circuits, offering an additional path through withdrawal, detox and addiction recovery.

Stress Management

Experiencing triggers is stressful for people in addiction treatment. VR can potentially reduce the risk of exposing individuals to stressful triggers by allowing them to encounter and beat their cravings in a controlled, virtual environment. This, in turn, helps them to increase their coping skills when encountering stressful cravings. Many studies to date focus on people experiencing PTSD – but this has clear implications for people undergoing addiction treatment.

VR can use real-time feedback to help individuals understand their stress-responses better. It does this by monitoring physiological responses to stress, such as heart rate, and feeding that back to the individual within the VR environment. From there, individuals in addiction treatment will have much better insight into when and why their stress responses occur, and this can be extremely helpful in learning to overcome them. This has been trialled successfully in people experiencing PTSD.

Enhancing traditional therapies

Using VR as a tool to enhance traditional therapies has several benefits. It can give people who find it difficult to access in-person support an easier way to avail of it, and it can augment tried and tested therapeutic tools to make them more effective.

By integrating VR with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, individuals can take the coping skills learned in CBT and apply them to real-time VR scenarios. This combines well with exposure therapy by allowing them to use tools they have learned in a safe and controlled way. Studies have found VR-based CBT to be beneficial and effective.

Engaging in peer support and connecting with others is a powerful tool in aiding recovery from drug addiction and alcohol addiction. However, for some, these groups can be difficult to access. People with disabilities may find it difficult to access in-person meetings, and people struggling with high anxiety could find leaving the house to attend peer support a difficult battle.

VR can help with this by reducing barriers to entry and allowing people to share their experiences and coping strategies remotely, offering them a chance to connect with peers that might otherwise be inaccessible to them.

Ethical Considerations and Potential Risks

While using VR in addiction treatment aims to increase safety and accessibility, there are still risks.

VR is an emerging technology, and that means informed consent is important. Individuals might not fully understand what VR treatment entails and will need to be fully informed of the process and what to expect. This is especially important for people in withdrawal or undergoing detox who are especially vulnerable.

VR is capable of recording sensitive data about individuals’ behaviour – any data recorded must be completely secure and assure the privacy of the person undergoing treatment.

Finally, VR therapy for addiction recovery must be evidence-based and rigorously tested. Using experimental, untested technology and techniques would be grossly unethical. By adhering to evidence-based methods, such as the ones outlined in this blog, the safety of the individual is protected, and risks are minimised.

Potential Future Developments

VR in addiction treatment is still in its early stages, and more research is needed. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, new horizons in treatment will open up. Personalised VR environments, connections to other forms of tech, such as wearable devices, and sophisticated, personalised virtual environments are all avenues for exploration. By embracing these advances and following an evidence-based approach, our toolbox for treating alcohol addiction and drug addiction will expand.