Preliminary survey of cues and scene
AD
DISEASES, SAID
Due to the differences in drinking culture in different countries, it is first and foremost important to identify alcohol-related cues that can effectively induce the alcohol craving in Chinese AD patients and to construct the VR cue exposure scene that is suitable for the actual situation of Chinese AD patients.A semistructured interview was conducted with male AD patients who were hospitalized in the Fifth Department of Psychiatry, Second Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University from September 2021 to November 2021. The interview content mainly included the basic information and alcohol consumption of the patients, including the type of alcoholic beverages, the time of drinking, the reason for drinking, the place of drinking, and whether others were present.A total of 40 male AD patients were recruited, and all of them met the diagnostic criteria for AD in the International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10). The age distribution ranged from 26 to 52 years old, years of education ranged from 6 to 18 years, cumulative drinking time ranged from 3 to 28 years, addiction time ranged from 0.25 to 17 years, and alcohol intake ranged from 76 to 636 g/day.The results showed that AD patients preferred to drink at home (37/40) and in restaurants (33/40), preferred white wine (39/40) and beer (35/40), and preferred to drink alcohol in the evening (38/40). More than half of AD patients (25/40) said that “when eating with friends in a restaurant, especially when they were persuaded to drink, they would have strong alcohol craving”. Nearly half of AD patients (19/40) said that they wanted to drink more when they saw bottles, glasses, smelled alcohol or saw others drinking, especially when they were in a restaurant.Based on these results, we chose the setting of multiple friends having dinner and drinking in a private room in a restaurant as a cue exposure scene.