April Marie Canillo

If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

Shirley Chisholm

In 2019, I offered free standardized NADA 5-point ear acupuncture to high-stress & high-pressure work environments to support those with addictions, trauma, mental health conditions, stress & anxiety, to ultimately promote community wellness.

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BRIEF UNDERGROUND HISTORY

For over 2500 years, people have been practicing auricular therapy in the treatment of diseases. After 1957, the international scientific community recognized that the mechanisms of auricular acupuncture have a close relationship with the entire body. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the ear is directly or indirectly connected to 12 meridians – and when stimulated can restore balance.

Auricular acupuncture’s 5 Needle Protocol (NADA) is a safe, simple and effective treatment designed and applied for pain relief, stress, trauma, recovery support, insomnia, and depression.

Auricular acupuncture is a convenient and basic method for treating many conditions.

The history of NADA begins with Hong Kong neurosurgen Dr. Wen who was researching the connection between the ancient Chinese practice of ear acupuncture and addiction treatment, and later systematized into a protocol by NY doctors in the late 1970s. 

The 1970s was one of the most grim chapters in The Bronx’s history – reaching significant poverty – while also marking the spread of acupuncture treatment for addiction treatment from The Bronx to the rest of the United States.

The decay of The Bronx was due to several factors – one of which was the completion of the Cross Bronx Expressway, an urban renewal project for New York City, that ironically led to extreme urban decay, displacing thousands of residents from their homes and several local businesses. The decreased property values, increased vacancy rates, lack in home maintenance, and neglect of support for impoverished communities caused some neighbourhoods to fill with high crime and gangs – plaguing streets with waves of arson.

Community groups staged sit-ins at several hospitals in the poor areas of New York City to call for better medical care. In the South Bronx, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican group) took over an administrative building at Lincoln hospital and negotiated for 12 hours – nailing the door shut – demanding more funds for the hospital, a grievance staff, a day-care centre, and better pay for hospital workers. Another sit-in a few months later that lasted three days developed and was aimed at getting the doctors to stop practicing abortions. Later that November, a five-hour protest by the Young Lords, Black Panthers and their white supporters forced the administrators of Lincoln Hospital to agree to set up an inpatient drug-treatment program – run by former drug users – Lincoln Detox.

On the first day of Lincoln Detox, a line up of users formed at the door of the hospital. Volunteers had everyone place their weapons in a box and the patients were treated with methadone. Gradually the program built up a staff of counselors and doctors.

The patients’ dissatisfaction with methadone motivated the drug-free treatment – acupuncture. Many crossroads fell into place before several counselors at the Lincoln Detox read glowing accounts of the use of acupuncture and became interested in using this method as an alternative to methadone. A few of the counselors went to study the practice in Montreal, one of the members being Mutulu Shakur – an activist tied to the Black Panthers and stepfather of Tupac – whose practice likely stemmed from treatments laid by “barefoot doctors” in Maoist China (part-time farmers and community health workers that dispensed basic medical care to their friends and neighbours).

The program became a model for the Black Panthers’ approach to health care.

“The Purpose of [political education] is to teach the children how
and why it is necessary to be critical of the situation the world is in, to foster an investigative attitude, and to provide a framework for the comparison of different peoples and their politics.”

Black Panther Party – Service to the People Programs – The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation

The common thread has been the deep mistrust of traditional medicine from a history of discrimination at the hands of doctors. 

Over time, acupuncture won over the skeptical Lincoln Detox employees who saw the change in their patients.

By the late 1970s, the Lincoln Detox program’s medical director was found murdered and left in a storage closet, and reports of fraud and waste within the program began to mount over. The then Brooklyn assemblyman Chuck Schumer denounced Lincoln Detox, forcing staff to move to a “new” building – a dump, with no heat.

Still the staff continued on.

Despite the negative publicity, the Lincoln Detox became a training centre for the alternative form to drug treatment – ear acupuncture.

A collective of gangs – The Young Lords and The Black Panthers Party practiced acupuncture at a hospital-based methadone clinic for heroin addicts – with the support of American Doctor, Richard Taft – purchased needles in Chinatown and began using them on the drug users from the ghetto neighbourhoods who wanted help. 

The young white doctor, Richard, who supported these efforts was later found murdered and stuffed in a closet in the back of the auditorium of Lincoln Detox – on the day he was due to meet a high ranking Washington official about the funding of the Lincoln Detox Acupuncture Program. Two months prior to his murder, he was shot by unknown assailants – and thus for months, Richard had carried a weapon for personal protection.

Many of the inequalities that moved the activists of the South Bronx to reject authority in the 70s are still plundering poor communities today.

Dr. Michael O. Smith soon took the place of the late doctor in the late 1970s at the Lincoln Hospital, and over time developed and standardized the 5-point treatment in order to make it efficient and readily reproducible. 

The National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) was later established in 1985.

NADA today is a non-profit professional organization, formed by a team of social workers and acupuncturists to expand awareness of acupuncture as a valuable treatment for addiction and the many ailments plaguing our society today. 

There are now over 25,000 trained associates and Acudetox specialists, over 2,000 clinical sites worldwide, and more than 600 addiction-recovery programs in the United States use acupuncture. 

REFERENCES

Hou, P. W., Hsu, H. C., Lin, Y. W., Tang, N. Y., Cheng, C. Y., & Hsieh, C. L. (2015). The History, Mechanism, and Clinical Application of Auricular Therapy in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2015, 495684. doi:10.1155/2015/495684

The History of The South Bronx, NY. UrbanAreas.net  https://urbanareas.net/info/resources/the-history-of-the-bronx-ny/the-history-of-the-south-bronx-ny/

AcuDetox Basics: A Compact Summary of the Core Concepts. Acudetox.com. https://acudetox.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Acudex-Basics.pdf

Cordes, S. (2014). The NADA Protocol: Needling for Mental Health and Substance Withdrawal.  https://www.drcordes.com/blog/2014/8/15/nadaprotocol

Khazan, O. (2018). How racism gave rise to acupuncture for addiction treatment. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/acupuncture-heroin-addiction/566393/

NADA History and AcuDetox. (2018). https://www.acudetoxcapetown.co.za/nada-history-and-acudetox/

People’s Doctor Murdered. (1974). https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC58_scans/58.White.Lightening.RichardTaft.pdf

Valentine, V. (2005). Health for the Masses: China’s Barefoot Doctors’.  https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4990242