Conventionally, therapy of drug addicts of repeated abuse of drugs including stimulant drugs is conducted, but there are no established therapeutic methods yet and various therapeutic methods are being tried.
Among such therapeutic methods, there is a proposal of a method of repeating a process of giving conditional stimuli suggestive of use of a drug to a drug addict and actually preventing the drug addict from administering the drug to cause the drug addict to lose any significance of the conditional stimuli and eventually suppress conditioned reflex (Non-Patent Document 1).
According to this Non-Patent Document 1, in the process from acquiring the drug to actually administering the drug, looking at the drug dealer's face, the pack containing the drug or syringe or the like, the drug addict is exposed to conditional stimuli and these conditional stimuli form a conditioned reflex circuit in the brain.
Therefore, although the drug addict does not administer the drug, the drug addict is believed to crave for the drug by means of conditioned reflex when he/she looks at the drug itself, the drug dealer's face, the pack containing the drug or syringe or the like.
Repeating the process of giving such conditional stimuli to the drug addict and actually not allowing him/her to administer the drug is expected to make less the significance of the conditional stimuli and thereby suppress the craving for the drug by means of conditioned reflex.
Here, in the above described conditional stimuli, examples of those having a great influence on the drug addict include the act itself of the drug addict operating the syringe and administering the drug, causing the blood to flow back into the syringe (flashback) to confirm whether or not the needle is inserted into the blood vessel and visually recognizing the insertion.
To treat by giving such conditional stimuli to the drug addict, a saline instead of the drug may be put into the syringe to let the drug addict administer this saline or visually recognize the backflow of the blood into the syringe. Non-Patent Document 1: Monthly “Psychiatry” Vol. 8, No. 6, issued on Jun. 28, 2006, “Treating Idiosyncrasy of Stimulant Drug Addiction” by Shinji Hirai