Virtual reality is emerging as a new tool to combat drug addiction, and this university-based startup is going all out

A team of researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine has found that virtual reality can be a powerful weapon in the fight against addiction – and has launched RelateXR, a startup with the idea of ​​helping addicts create a “therapeutic alliance” through imagination with yourself” to build your future with and without drugs.

RelateXR uses virtual reality to help recovering addicts imagine the outcome of their current behavior or an alternative in which they find themselves

“There is ample evidence that people with addiction problems have difficulty adjusting to their personal future,” says founder Brandon Oberlin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the departments of psychology and neurology at Indiana University School of Medicine. “Behavioral economics shows that people with addiction value their future much less than people without addiction.”

RelateXR offers what the founders call “healing imagination training,” creating custom avatars based on photos of individual users — with cloned versions of their voices — to allow them to travel 15 years into the future and find reasons to do so to be valued more. Once they put on their headset, they can meet two possible future selves – one in recovery and one still using drugs.

“We all have infinite possible futures,” Oberlin explains.

The team has raised nearly $5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health to support their patent-pending invention. It is currently in clinical trials. When I spoke to the team in July, it had been tested on about 71 users, including controls.

Many health experts are looking for new ways to help the many Americans addicted to opioids and other drugs. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, more than 96,000 people now die from drug overdoses each year. According to the center, opioids have been linked to 7 out of 10 overdose deaths. “There’s a huge need for this,” Oberlin says. “The scale of the problem is huge. The death toll is particularly shocking.”

As the public becomes increasingly educated about the dangers of opioids, the situation has improved somewhat, albeit slightly. The Centers for Disease Control found that drug overdose deaths fell slightly from 111,029 in 2022 to 107,543 in 2023, with a decline in opioid-related deaths driving the trend. However, deaths from other types of drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine increased.

RelateXR app users can imagine their life if they stopped using drugs, with all the daily decisions that come with it, or continued using them. If they choose to “give up” virtually, they see a future with new activities that replace the drugs — such as repairing a relationship with their spouse, starting a family, or returning to school.

“Our idea is to connect people with their future selves by making it real,” says Oberlin. “If it is vivid and realistic and feels authentic, it leads to positive, pro-social decision-making that is not addictive.” We took that idea and implemented it.”

Oberlin has 20 years of experience in addiction research. The other founding team members are Andrew Nelson – who leads technology for RelateXR and is the owner of gaming startup Half Full Nelson – and student Izzy Branham, who leads RelateXR's business development and previously co-founded Fia Technologies, a talent acquisition platform, that uses machine learning. The university's technology transfer office connected Branham with the RelateXR team.

To develop the app, the founders worked with people in early recovery – from two weeks to eleven and a half months – who were clean and sober. In a randomized, controlled trial, they found that addicts who used the app experienced an increase in self-efficacy – an indicator of recovery success – within 30 days.

The realistic nature of the avatars is one of the reasons the app is so effective, notes Nelson. “It makes a big difference to have a naturally speaking version of yourself that sounds like yourself,” he says.

The founders' goal is to offer RelateXR at a price point comparable to medication-assisted therapy (MAT), considered by some experts to be the gold standard in treating opioid use disorder. The founders view RelateXR as a complement to MAT, 12-step programs and other treatment approaches.

Relate XR has spoken to the FDA about approving the app as a medical device. “Our goal would be to roll it out in treatment centers and individual therapist practices,” says Oberlin.

Many treatment facilities have a reason to remain open to new advances. Addicts often lose trust in treatment centers. In an interview on local television, a recovering crack addict who lived on the streets of Minneapolis for a time said that while he didn't trust anyone – police officers, counselors or probation officers – he liked that the app only required him to trusting himself: “That’s the only one I’ll listen to,” he said.