It was another beautiful and cold but sunny morning in Pueblo, Colorado. Being a native of southern California, I found the 42-degree day quite a change from home. Pueblo is a wonderful city, but I wasn't there on vacation. I went there to sit in on a program being held by NADA (the national Acupuncture Detoxification Association) in nearby Denver.
The group of attendees and teachers that gathered from across the country brought with them a wide variety of specialties and backgrounds. The classes began with a basic understanding of addiction and addiction theory. I appreciated the "baby steps" we took in the learning experience; for someone who doesn't practice acupuncture, the information was quite helpful. During the first day of training, the attendees were given their first treatments by the instructors. All in all, it was a great experience. How often do you get to sit down with needles in your ears, and just relax, meditate, and "be" for three-quarters of an hour?
One of the first speakers was Libby Souvt, a medical doctor from the Colorado Mental Institute. She shared statistics on how people felt about tobacco after going through the program. She is a strong supporter that acupuncture seems to help with relaxation and cravings, and that there are no side-effects from treatment. There seems to be no downside. By the end of the morning session, I found my beliefs about acupuncture being reinforced in that it really does work.
The program included a brief history of NADA, followed by a discussion of the NADA protocol and its benefits. It seems that a doctor in Hong Kong was treating patients experiencing postsurgical pain with a similar protocol. An individual at the Lincoln Memorial Hospital in the South Bronx area of New York read about the study, and asked several Chinese doctors in the New York area to see if the protocol really worked, then returned to the hospital and formulated a treatment protocol, using five needles in each ear. At that time, heroin was the drug of choice for most of the drug patients at Lincoln, followed by alcohol. In the early 1980s, cocaine and crack cocaine hit the streets and made their way into society. The hospital began using the treatment protocol, and it showed tremendous signs of success.
The protocol is not about the substance, but about the person being treated. The five ear points are only part of the entire NADA protocol. Other parts include the following:
The addition of acupuncture into the treatment for addiction seems to be very beneficial, and almost the single ingredient that helps the protocol succeed. There are numerous benefits for patients by using this protocol:
The NADA protocol is simple, yet quite effective. It seems to be effective not only in treating drug addiction, but also for reducing stress. As a person who is interested in marketing and public relations, I found myself looking for ways to use the protocol and spread the word about acupuncture.
One of the ways this protocol could be used in marketing is to have a group class for stress reduction. This could be done in your office or at an employer's location. Almost everyone in this country can use some intervention for stress reduction. Using the NADA protocol where there is no barrier for entry, the paperwork you hand to the group would include consent to treat, so that while people may come for stress reduction, they could receive other benefits. On the way out, you could give each person more information regarding acupuncture and Oriental medicine, as well as the other conditions that can be treated. You could provide services to the group for free, or you could charge a small amount per person. This is a good way to provide community service and begin educating others to the healing benefits of acupuncture.
Drug, alcohol and tobacco addictions are major problems that affect tens of millions of people in America. This is not just a problem in America, but something that is occurring worldwide. There is a group in northern Ireland using the NADA protocol as well as groups in Great Britain and Nigeria. There is also a group in Budapest, Hungary.
Just imagine the impact the Oriental medicine profession could make on the health of the American public if every licensed practitioner would make a habit to donate just one hour per week to helping people with addictions. What a wonderful way to give back. In addition to helping people, the profession would receive public relations coverage that would have far-reaching affects.
If you are licensed but not trained in the NADA protocol, I suggest you take this specialized training. Find an existing program and volunteer. Figure out how to start a program in your community. Get involved in a drug court program in your community. Taking these steps will help you find a place where you can donate your services to help the people in your community to reach a new level of health.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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