If you love smoking crack cocaine, then the chances are that you are not actually reading this, but in fact lying in a gutter somewhere awful with wee stains on your unwashed jeans, crying bitter tears of regret, screaming out in pain and anger at an unfair and unjust world.

However, if you are addicted to those expensive little white rocks there is now hope in video game form. A Duke University (that's in the States, rather than being somewhere you can get a Phd in being an aristocrat) project invites addicts into a virtual reality crack house, as a way of treating their hapless addiction.

The game places junkies in tempting situations (i.e. a crack house) and was designed by Duke professor, Zach Rosenthal working closely with the Durham, North Carolina Police Department, which helped the Prof and his team by taking them to local crack dens where the team took digital images for use in the game.

Rosenthal told an interviewer on ABC news this week:

“What we’re trying to do is take people into a virtual crack-related neighborhood or crack-related setting and have them experience cravings, just like they would in the real world….When temptation arises [in game]… the patient rates his or her own craving level. But the magic moment comes when a high craving subsides, which it does, because the patient won’t be taking drugs in the virtual world.”

He continued: “The therapist tries to tie that moment, when a craving subsides, to a trigger, like a tone. So the addict eventually learns to associate the sound with the sensation of decreased craving… For example, if an addict ends up in a [real world] tempting situation, he or she can take out the phone donated by the program, dial a number and hear that tone. The addict remembers the sound learned in the therapy session, and the craving should subside.”

^{source: GamePolitics}