Patent US 6,561,811

An intervention method in which computer-based role-playing games are utilized to allow players to experience simulated effects of substance abuse on the individual, family, friends, and community, and thus learn by experience to avoid the adverse consequences of drug abuse through abstinence, promotion of abstinence by others, and treatment and correction of substance abusers. Role-playing games allow players to pretend to be a character in a story, much like being in a play. Each player takes the role of a character in the story, making the decisions and saying the things that character would say in the situations that happen along the way. Game objectives are set which the player or players attempt to complete through game-play. The intervention method involves realistically portraying the consequences of substance abuse and its interference with the individual's or group's chances of meeting the game objectives. To better meet the game objectives, players must practice social resistance skills, and are rewarded for avoiding drugs as well as for helping other characters avoid drug use. Thus, within the safety of the role-playing game environment, conditioned learning is used to teach players to avoid substance abuse as they learn by experience about the effects of drugs, their adverse consequences, how to resist pressures to use drugs and how to help others to do so as well.