Acupuncture for Substance Abuse.

Acupuncture is commonly used to help people withdraw from tobacco, alcohol, heroin or cocaine addiction; it's currently being studied by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, and it's used widely in New York City for outpatient drug detoxification.

The points for treating drug addiction are found on the ear, and they can be taught relatively easily to laypeople, which then only use acupuncture for this specific purpose. Detoxification from chronic use of prescribed opiates usually takes 3-6 months; even "brief" detoxification programs may take more than a month. In an uncontrolled trial of electrical stimulation at ear acupuncture points, twelve out of fourteen chronic pain patients were able to completely withdraw from narcotics within 2-7 days, and they experienced few or no side effects.

The evidence that acupuncture helps with withdrawal symptoms is tantalizing but insufficient, and it probably doesn't help prevent relapses at all. But given the dearth of successful medical treatments for addiction, there clearly needs to be more research into the role of acupuncture detoxification as part of a comprehensive treatment program.

An excellent review of studies of acupuncture and substance abuse was written by Brewington, Smith and Lipton, the first two of whom work at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, where the use of acupuncture in treating withdrawal symptoms of drug addiction was pioneered. If you're interested in a comprehensive analysis of both published and unpublished trials, see this review.

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