Tripping on VR

Tripping on VR
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VR, in our view, is hardware still looking for an application, and while gaming seems to be the application of choice for those who value the VR experience, the VR industry continues to tout its use in other, seemingly more legitimate applications, such as VR classrooms, VR in medicine, VR in business, VR in travel, and of course, VR in shopping.  That said, gaming is the largest category for VR application, and while there are great differences in estimates for the VR gaming market itself, we expect that VR gaming sales are second only to VR hardware, with all of the other applications being secondary, other than shopping, which, in what are somewhat stunted forms currently, likely become the largest VR applications down the road.
That said, we came across a VR application that struck us by its very strangeness, the use of VR in psychedelic psychotherapy, a field that must rely on clinical trials given the Federal illegality of many psychedelic drugs.  Psychedelic therapy, which can be used for PTSD, anxiety, OCD, and other cognitive and social disorders, is difficult on its own, as it is expensive and must be done in a strictly controlled setting with trained clinicians, but Enosis Therapeutics (pvt), a small firm located in Melbourne, Australia has developed four VR applications that the OVID Clinic (pvt) in Berlin is using as part of its psychedelic psychotherapy, an adjunct to the clinic’s Ketamine-based therapy.
The VR applications are (company words):

• Grounding – Used during the preparation, dosing, and ‘integration’ stage of the therapy session, providing a transition space from daily life to therapy.
• Surrender – Used during the dosing stage, providing an ‘awe-evoking’ scenario that helps the patient to engage more deeply with their trip and sets the focus on their intention.
• Rescue – Used during dosing, known as ‘digital diazepam and reliably and transiently pulls the participant out of the experience if it becomes counterproductive..
• Anchoring  - Used during all stages of therapy to create a multi-sensory memory library.  Expands tangible connections between insights and creates a multi-sensory mind map as the meaning making process unfolds and invites users to revisit and consolidate their recorded insights into a memory library.

Whether you believe the company’s theories about how VR can be used in conjunction with psychedelic psychological therapy or not, you have to give the company credit for coming up with a novel use for VR.  While we are not sure that a VR environment is tolerable for anyone micro-dosing psychedelics, we can’t rule out the concept as we have yet to experience it, however we expect we would rely more on the clinical results from other studies rather than our own potential experience.  One typical aspect of those under the influence of psychedelic substances is the loss of reference points, sometimes relating to one’s body, and a similar loss of the sense of space, which are also analogous to the phenomena many experience in VR.  Whether the experience of using both psychedelics and VR intensifies or reduces those phenomena is an open question for most, but we expect the potential use of VR in psychedelic psychological therapy is not an application that will move the needle in the VR world.
Watch the Company promo here: https://youtu.be/l_B8OMsQ7xM
 

Figure 1 - VR in the Classroom - Source: fcs.uga.edu Figure 2 - VR in Medicine - Source: orthofeed.com Figure 3 - VR in the Meeting Room - Source: AV Magazine Figure 4 - VR in the Travel Industry - Source: Analytics Insight Figure 5 - VR in Shopping - Source: AR/VR magazine