nada history

[Guest guest]

The history of NADA is dear to my heart and one of the reasons I got

into acupuncture. While living in NYC near Chinatown doing research on

acupuncture I came across Walter Bosque who told this story (as I

remember it). In the late 1960's-early 1970's he was a member or in

other ways affiliated with the Young Lords, a Latino-Puerto Rican group

roughly equivalent to the Black Panthers. They began martial arts

training and naturally started meeting Asian martial artists and

doctors. Simultaneously there was a flood of heroin into Spanish Harlem

and throughout New York's poorer neighborhoods. Obviously this was a

major concern for them and they came across someone, I believe, from

Taiwan or Hong Kong who was using the ear points with great success.

Methadone was being used for detox and they saw that as equally hideous

in its effects of tying the addicts to the System. They saw that their

friends were being helped with acupuncture from this man.

Eventually a group of the Young Lords went to Montreal to train in

acupuncture. I believe it was for a few months that they were there. On

coming back they needed to have substantiation from a regular doctor

and that is where Michael Smith comes in. He worked with them and

started the program at Lincoln. This group was very militant Left and

the program often ran into political difficulties. One point of NADA

was that addicts would, after kicking, eventually become practitioners.

This was part of the still controversial " Social Model " of Treatment.

We see this more recently in Michael and other NADA practitioners

arguing that those who may not qualified as Acupuncturists should be

allowed to use the NADA protocol. This mentioned in Matt's comments

below.

20 years later Walter seemed bitter that to continue at Lincoln

Hospital, Smith had to strip the political elements of acupuncture and

took credit for NADA. (oh well, these things happen)

As the Black Panther Party was killed off, another group of even more

militant black people took up acupuncture through Lincoln as part of

their overall political agenda. (read below). (A friend of mine

remembers going to a demonstration with them during that time. On the

bus he had to constantly be vigilant as he walked down the aisle that

he didn't brush the many acupuncture needles sticking out of

everybody.) These people also began working at Lincoln.

So that's about all I remember of this story. Bosque remains a kind of

a mysterious link in this (perhaps because acupuncture was basically

illegal except to Chinese in New York until recently). I find it a

fascinating story. For those who want to do more research I would

suggest asking Misha Cohen who seems to have known these people way

back when. Whether her account would agree with my second hand account,

I don't know.

doug

 

 

http://www.mutulushakur.com/drugs.html

 

a document from 1977

http://www.mutulushakur.com/articles/

TheuseofAcupunturetotreatdrugaddiction.html

 

excerpt from

http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/neh.html

Abiodun soon found kindred spirits working at an experimental detox

program at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. Under the guidance of

Mutulu Shakur, a charismatic Republic of New Afrika member, Lincoln

Detox favored acupuncture over methadone, operated as a self-described

socialist collective, and viewed the political radicalization of its

patients as essential. For Abiodun, an activist who had been involved

with mainstream community groups in Harlem, it was a heady mix: “There

were ex-Panthers, ex-members of the Republic of New Afrika, members of

the Young Lords -- the Puerto Rican movement. And there were white

people who had been involved in SDS [students for a Democratic

Society].”

 

But to city officials, the presence of these radicals only aggravated

an already offensive situation. In November 1978 New York Assemblyman

Charles Schumer bitterly complained to the New York Times that “Lincoln

Detox has compiled a well-documented record of millions of dollars in

unsubstantiated payroll costs, over billing for patient care and other

egregious management failures.” Mayor Ed Koch subsequently evicted the

Lincoln Detox program from Lincoln Hospital, stripped away its autonomy

by placing it under hospital management, and had its Shakur-aligned

staffers reassigned. Koch later explained that Shakur and his followers

“ran it like Che Guevara was their patron saint, with his pictures all

over the wall. It wasn't a hospital; it was a radical cell.”

 

But as far as Abiodun was concerned, those two concepts -- health care

and radical politics needed some sort of fusion. “It was obvious that

alternate methods of healing drug and alcohol addictions were not going

to be stood for by the status quo,” she recounted. In her view the

city's actions against Lincoln Detox dramatized the futility of trying

to reform a corrupt system: “That's when I made a conscious decision

that I was going to devote my life in a more disciplined way to try

bringing about a change in the United States.”

 

Abiodun joined other former Lincoln Detox staffers in a new collective

headed by Mutulu Shakur: the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of

North America (BAAANA), based out of a Harlem brownstone and dedicated

to providing health care free from city control. It also was in 1978

that she stopped using her birth name, Cheri Dalton, and chose the

moniker Nehanda Abiodun. “Nehanda” was an ancient spirit that inhabited

the human form in order to lead the Zimbabwean people in their

independence struggle against the British, while “Abiodun” was a word

used in Nigeria to mean “born at the time of war.”

 

 

 

On May 29, 2005, at 8:19 AM,

Chinese Medicine wrote:

 

>

> Message: 11

> Sun, 29 May 2005 08:13:26 -0700

> " Matt Bauer " <acu.guy

> Re: NADA and Crack Abuse

>

> Here is some more information on the evolution of the NADA protocols.

> I don't have 100% of the story as Michael seems to like to leave some

> details to speculation just for fun. Dr. Michael Smith is a

> psychiatrist who specialized in treatment of drug abuse. At one

> NADA-style facility I worked at in Los Angeles' Skid-Row, I saw

> research papers Michael had written in the 1960's where he was

> observing/researching/helping people who were overdosing or having bad

> drug experiences at concerts and the like in San Francisco. In other

> words, he has worked at the street level on the drug phenomenon since

> that time.

>

>

>

> He had a partner (I believe a senior partner) and they ran a methadone

> clinic for heroin addicts at the Lincoln hospital in New York's South

> Bronx area - a very bad part of town. They heard about acupuncture

> being used to treat opium addicts in China (perhaps Hong Kong?) and

> went there to observe as they thought it could be helpful for heroin

> addicts as the substances are in the same family. They were impressed

> with what they saw and came back and began experimenting with

> different protocols. They tried using differential diagnosis (I

> believe with licensed acupuncturists doing the treatments) and body

> points but eventually found by trial and error that ear points seemed

> to work the best. They may well have been influenced Wen as the Lung

> point was stressed as very important but overall, Michael talks about

> how much more effective the points on the concave (yin) aspects of the

> ear are than the raised (yang) points. Most of the points are those

> that deal with elimination/detoxification - lung, liver, and kidney.

> Shen-men of course helps deal with emotional/spiritual issues. Some

> NADA clinics used a variation and may have only used 3 or 4 points

> with lung, shen-men, and liver or kidney points being always used.

>

>

>

> Now here is the remarkable part of the story: Within a year or so of

> experimenting with acupuncture, they did away with methadone entirely

> and only used acupuncture for detox. Their success rate went up and

> the clinic grew in popularity with addicts. It did not grow in

> popularity with the local drug dealers however, who began experiencing

> a loss of business. They began threatening the two doctors who

> continued their work. One morning - the legend goes - Michael comes

> into work and finds his partner stuffed in a closet - shot full of

> heroin - murdered by the drug dealers. Michael takes over the clinic

> and continues the work despite continued threats on his life.

>

>

>

> Another aspect of the story that bears attention is the professional

> animosity Michael was subject to because of his work. He was brutally

> ridiculed by his psychiatrist/drug specialist colleagues for using

> this protocol. They thought he was a hippie, California flake and he

> was laughed off stage at conferences and ripped in journals. He was

> also vilified by the acupuncture profession here in the states because

> he was not a licensed acupuncturist (he eventually took and passed the

> NCCAOM exams) and he used a set protocol of points instead of

> individualized treatment. Leaders of acupuncture organizations and

> others made him out to be an enemy of the profession because he taught

> drug counselors to do the needling. Of course, he was taking this

> protocol to any jail, Indian reservation, or otherwise destitute place

> that would have him and there were no acupuncturists there to do the

> treatments, but that didn't seem to matter to our profession's

> self-appointed leaders.

>

>

>

> After working with Michael, I came to appreciate just how important

> the whole NADA protocol was. It is MUCH more than a set of ear points.

> Every aspect of a NADA-style clinic has been refined to improve

> success. Even the name " NADA " , which is Spanish means " nothing " ,

> reflects Michael's Taoist perspective and the counseling skills and

> manner in which the clinic is managed are crucial to this protocol.

> Many acupuncturists thought the success of this protocol was due to

> the acupuncture alone and that Michael took advantage of this to

> become famous even though he was not an acupuncturist himself. I know

> this to be true because I was involved with trying to smooth-out

> relations with these acupuncture groups who were fighting against NADA

> clinics using councilors to do acupuncture. Michael tried to tell

> these people that they should be more concerned with having

> acupuncturists run these types of programs rather than worry about who

> is doing the needling. Here in California, NADA can still not get

> legislation passed allowing drug councilors to do NADA treatments.

>

>

>

> Although I stress how important the entire NADA clinic/counseling

> protocol is, Michael will be the first one to point out that the

> acupuncture is crucial. And while I believe Michael is a truly

> remarkable man who has almost single-handedly done more to help one of

> the most socially scorned classes of society, he will emphasize that

> the story of NADA's development is a team effort involving many people

> over many years.

>

>

>

> While I have met several doctors/healers in our field whose work I

> admire, I can't think of anyone who has had to undergo more ridicule

> and resistance than Michael while pioneering treatment for a segment

> of society few would bother with. Those in the acupuncture profession

> who were so quick to point out that he was a psychiatrist - not an

> acupuncturist - when they were fighting against him, should consider

> themselves lucky that Michael considers himself an acupuncturist now

> that the NADA protocols have brought the practice of acupuncture

> worldwide attention.

>

>

>

>

>

>