You, or perhaps your family and friends, may be skeptical that natural therapies could possibly be powerful enough to effectively treat opioid addiction. What sort of natural therapies could hope to compete with established medical and pharmaceutical protocols for a destructive and debilitating health condition of such epic proportions?
As it turns out, high recidivism rates for opioid users indicate that the traditional approach to addiction treatment — drug therapy (to detoxify and/or to substitute for opioids), behavioral therapy, and counseling — is not working; relapse rates are reported to be as high as 91 percent. 1 Meanwhile, an explosion of scientifically validated, peer-reviewed studies, which you can find at such venerable sources as the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed database, are proving that natural therapies — treatments that use energetic healing, botanical medicines, and mindfulness to stimulate, support, and heal the body’s own systems of healing — can help opioid users successfully overcome addiction, reduce withdrawal symptoms, and manage pain for the long term.
In fact, natural therapies like acupuncture, acupressure, medicinal herbs, essential oils, nutritional strategies, supplements, and meditation have been so successful in clinical applications that they are presently being integrated into the treatment programs of major hospitals across the United States. Western medical practitioners who have been frustrated with the lack of viable options for easing pain, reversing chronic disease, or combating opioid addiction have found that natural therapies can effectively address these health issues. The reasons are multifold:
Beyond the proven benefits of a holistic approach versus traditional treatment, there can be a very real difference between the two approaches in their perspective on addiction. In our culture, we tend to assign a certain stigma to those who become addicted to drugs. We assume some weakness in their willpower, some fault in their choices, some contamination of their character that led them to become addicts — and that will forever mark them as addicts.
Traditional 12-step programs, for example, require participants to acknowledge that they are addicts and that their addiction is a lifelong condition. The ostensible intentions are to instill a sense of humility and accountability, to build character, and to establish a foundation of self-awareness and strength. Those are all good principles, not just for addicts but for anyone, in any situation. However, the concept of addiction as a lifelong condition is outdated. Current science on neuroplasticity (which we’ll discuss in chapter 1) tells us that our brain has the potential to change and heal. That is, though our brain may become wired for addiction, we can rewire it using holistic mind-body therapies to eliminate the pathways of addiction. So, contrary to much of the literature available from traditional treatment programs, addiction is actually a curable disease.
People like to say, “Once an addict, always an addict.” But that perspective runs counter to Chinese medical theory and to my personal clinical experience. As a holistic practitioner, I do not view patients as broken, flawed, or immoral; rather, I see my patients as unique individuals who have imbalances that can be modified and corrected through holistic healing methods. And science — good, hard science — backs me up.
Anyone with any form of opioid dependency, regardless of the severity or scope of the dependency, can benefit from the natural therapies discussed in this book. These therapies will help you:
What qualifies as dependency? You can be dependent on opioids because not taking them leaves you in debilitating pain. Or because you’ve been taking them, and when you stop, you don’t feel well. Or because you don’t function as well when you are not taking them. Or because you have uncontrollable intense cravings for opioids. Or because you are unable to stop taking opioids, even though using them is negatively affecting your personal relationships and finances. (Those last two are generally categorized as an addiction rather than a dependency, but the distinction can be a gray area.)
In general, someone who has been using opioids for a few weeks, while in recovery from an accident or surgery, is going to have a much easier time giving them up than the chronic addict who has been using them for years. But what constitutes dependency is different for different people.
Natural therapies are not a stand-alone strategy for quitting opioid use. Medical support and/or counseling is usually also necessary. If you have been prescribed opioids for short-term use, you will want to coordinate with your prescribing health-care provider to work out a schedule for weaning yourself off the medication. Those on the opposite end of the spectrum, suffering from chronic addiction, will require intensive medical support and/or counseling along with other local support.
If you still need medical support and counseling in order to kick the opioid habit, why would you also want to use natural therapies? As noted earlier, recidivism rates for opioid users are high. Very high. Withdrawal can be a grueling process, and many people fail. Natural therapies can lessen the physical symptoms, such as digestive issues and muscle spasms, but, more important, they can calm the mind so that patients do not feel as though they are “climbing out of their own skin,” as many of my patients describe it. Moreover, natural healing modalities can address some of the more troubling symptoms of withdrawal that often thwart recovery, such as a deep sense of depression and loss of energy and spirit; these are, in fact, among the most common reasons for relapse.
This book is designed to help you integrate and aggregate natural therapies with other efforts, leading to a better outcome in a shorter amount of time. I often focus on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) because that is my training; I am a licensed doctor of acupuncture and Oriental medicine (DAOM). In my clinical practice, I have found both acupuncture and Chinese medicine to be very effective in treating opioid dependency. I have also found other natural healing modalities, like herbal medicine and mindfulness meditation, to be effective, and I integrate them into treatment protocols.
TCM is by nature a holistic system of healing. It views the body as a manifestation of energies and matter in which an imbalance in one area affects the entire system. Thus, addiction, disease, and pain conditions are simply patterns of imbalance. From this perspective, imbalance, not lack of willpower, is the cause of disease and addiction, and the job of the TCM practitioner is to help the patient regain balance. I think that most practitioners of any form of holistic medicine would agree.
TCM is a complex medical system, and it is easy for a practitioner to overexplain the subject and cause confusion. You cannot understand every detail and nuance of TCM without many years of study. However, a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese medicine will allow you to understand how it can benefit you and help you take responsibility for your health. I’ll lay out the basic concepts in chapter 2, which will be helpful if you are unfamiliar with Chinese medicine. To take full advantage of all that Chinese medicine has to offer — and it is very effective in treating opioid dependency — I urge you to seek out a trained practitioner for guidance.