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published and unpublished trials, see this review.

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