Reprinted from: Surging News | 2017-08-09

While some technology giants are still discussing whether ”virtual reality" (VR) technology will make people addicted and lost in the virtual world, VR has officially entered a drug rehabilitation center to help assess and treat the meth addiction of addicts. Recently, Surging news (www.thepaper.cn ) Learned from the Zhejiang Provincial Drug Rehabilitation Administration that there are 4 in ZhejiangThe compulsory isolation drug rehabilitation center set up a VR drug rehabilitation function room, completed 1,008 effective sample tests, and successfully built a thousand-person virtual reality drug addiction assessment and correction database.

In fact, the VR drug rehabilitation method that came out of Zhejiang is going nationwide. On June 21st, Cao Xuejun, director of the Drug Rehabilitation Administration of the Ministry of Justice, said at a press conference that in order to improve the scientific and professional level of drug rehabilitation work and improve the quality of drug rehabilitation, new methods such as drug rehabilitation exercises, traditional Chinese medicine massage, and VR drug rehabilitation have been introduced into drug rehabilitation work. Chen Yuhai, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Drug Rehabilitation Administration, was on the scene at the same time.The situation of VR detoxification is specifically introduced.

On February 21st, in the compulsory isolation drug rehabilitation center in Liangzhu, Zhejiang, drug rehabilitation personnel were watching a VR drug rehabilitation video. Surging news reporter Xie Kuang Shitu

Hangzhou Seventh Technology Co., Ltd., which cooperated with the Zhejiang Provincial Drug Rehabilitation Administration to develop this “virtual reality drug addiction assessment and correction system”, introduced that many drug rehabilitation sites in Hebei, Henan, Yunnan and other places have expressed their intention to introduce the system, and it is expected to be deployed within two to three months.

Sample of one thousand people: the treatment efficiency of moderately thirsty people is 98.1%

Dr. Wang Yongguang, the project leader and a distinguished expert from the Zhejiang Provincial Drug Rehabilitation Administration, said that there are three main indicators to measure the “virtual reality drug addiction assessment and correction system", namely the accuracy rate of craving assessment, the efficiency of treatment, and the recovery rate.

This system was developed for meth, which is different from drugs such as heroin that can trigger physiological dependence. Meth mainly triggers psychological cravings. “If it's an addiction to smoking, if you take a cigarette and shake it in front of him, he might be addicted to smoking. But meth is different. First of all, you can't really use meth to stimulate him. Secondly, meth is visually similar to salt,” Wang Yongguang said. In mandatory isolation drug rehabilitation centers, drug addicts are not exposed to psychological stimulation at all and will not develop drug addiction, so it is difficult to evaluate the effect of drug rehabilitation.

The system first triggers drug addiction through “immersive” VR technology. During the viewing process, the heart rate of drug users will change to varying degrees. Systematically record and evaluate these heart rate changes, and obtain an objective and quantitative ”drug craving" indicator. By observing the changes in “drug craving” before and after treatment, the therapeutic effect of VR detoxification therapy can be intuitively evaluated. And if the “heart is like water" when watching a drug addiction trigger film, which is the same as a normal person, it can be regarded as a cure.

Wang Yongguang introduced, "Through the comparison and analysis of thousands of sample data, it is proved that the accuracy rate of the system's prediction of methamphetamine (meth) craving is 95.9%, the treatment efficiency is 73.6%, and the recovery rate is 37.6%. Among them, the effective rate of treatment for people with mild cravings is 65%, the effective rate of treatment for people with moderate cravings is 98.1%, and the effective rate of treatment for people with severe cravings is 67.3%. The different effective rates are mainly caused by the different tolerance of aversion therapy. According to the different cravings, the system has been differentiated in terms of algorithms. ”These 1008 samples received an average of 6 VR treatments.

VR detoxification Video: Content and Principle

So, what kind of content is presented in the VR detoxification film, and what principle is the treatment based on? At the beginning of this year, after the system passed the demonstration of industry experts from the Institute of Mental Health of Peking University and the Hangzhou Municipal Health and Planning Commission in Hangzhou, Surging News visited the first pilot institute, Zhejiang Liangzhu Compulsory Isolation Drug Rehabilitation Center, and experienced a VR drug rehabilitation video at Hangzhou Seventh Technology Co., Ltd.

Put on VR glasses and put a data cable connected to a heart rate measuring device on your wrist. The VR detoxification system will evaluate the craving for drug addiction by measuring the variability of the viewer's heart rate while playing the movie, and evaluate the effect of detoxification based on this.

The film is roughly divided into three stages. In the first stage, the film restored the real drug abuse scene. In the second stage, VR videos show the consequences of drug abuse. It is clinically called "aversion therapy”. The purpose is to make drug users feel repulsed by drug-related things and achieve abstinence from taking drugs. After the “disgust treatment” stage of “nausea”, the VR detoxification film ends with a warm “return” stage.

The “immersive” sense of VR technology itself, coupled with the “attention to detail” during production, are all restoring the temptation scenes that drug addicts may encounter when they return to real life. “It can be said that as long as drug addicts can resist the temptation of drug addiction in our VR movies, they can successfully resist the temptation of drug addiction living in reality. "Wang Yongguang said.

In addition, VR technology assists traditional “aversion therapy”, which can achieve a better detoxification effect, that is, allowing drug users to establish new conditioned reflexes between drugs and disgusting negative scenes. However, the effect of this simple “Papulov-style” “aversion therapy” is unstable. “People are not the same as animals. People can think and have logic. He may not think that drugs are annoying, but the people who show him movies are annoying,” Wang Yongguang said.

The VR detoxification R&D team noticed an Israeli research team's “post-extraction adversarial conditional restriction method” published last year in Neuropsychopharmacology, a sub-issue of the journal Nature. “The best thing about a person is memory, and the worst is memory. "Wang Yongguang said. Memory is also the most important thing for detoxification. This kind of ”post-extraction confrontational conditional restriction method“ essentially extracts the ”good" memory of the drug first, and then immediately modifies it with the bad electric shock memory. The VR detoxification system awakens drug addiction through the first stage of the film, extracts memories, and then replaces memories with the second stage of “aversion therapy”, and finally uses the third stage of warm videos to encourage drug addicts to get rid of drug addiction as soon as possible, return to their families and normal lives.

However, when Surging News visited, the “Virtual reality drug Addiction Assessment and Correction System” was just a set of common videos. In order to improve the evaluation and correction effect, personalized programs are necessary. In other words, different film modules and treatment courses are combined according to differences in factors such as the degree of addiction and sensitivity to treatment content. Hangzhou Seventh Technology Co., Ltd. introduced that the compulsory isolation and drug rehabilitation center for women in Moganshan, Zhejiang, which is being deployed, needs to be redesigned due to gender differences.