Since 2004, through a grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), and in partnership with Psychology Software Tools, we at the Duke Cognitive Behavioral Research and Treatment Program have been developing and evaluating the promise of a virtual reality platform designed to help people addicted to crack cocaine. The virtual world was created with the help of two groups of adults addicted to crack, who were receiving treatment at Southlight, Inc. in Raleigh. These generous and gracious individuals gave us very specific details about the ways in which we should create our people, places, and things in our virtual environments. We also had the help of the Durham Police, who accompanied us as we took digital images and video of public places that we believed would be appropriate material for our virtual environments. We then created the story lines and scripts, and began to obtain initial acceptability data with patients. In our early results from an open clinical trial, we found that participants rated the virtual environments as highly realistic, and the virtual environments elicited cravings.

     In a recently completed study, we compared weekly drug counseling (both individual and group each week) to weekly drug counseling (both individual and group each week) plus virtual reality-based exposure therapy and cellular phone-based reminders of new learning that may occur during exposure therapy. The data are being analyzed and we expect results to be available in the fall.

     We are no longer recruiting new participants into this treatment study.