How ancient oriental medicine helps SUD treatment? 

Ancient Oriental medicine was mainly performed by punctuating needles along the skin of the body to cure diseases. Acupuncture is a traditional oriental treatment, which is commonly used for pain relief. Dr. Chang, Bei-Hung and Dr. Sommers, Elizabeth conducted a research on the effectiveness of auricular acupuncture in substance abuse disorder (SUD) treatment. The research hypothesized that auricular acupuncture would release craving and anxiety in substance abusers. The research team randomly selected groups of veterans from three Veterans Administration residential rehabilitation programs for homeless veterans. Currently, numerous veterans are addicted to drugs and more than 1.6 million veterans are estimated to fall within the criteria of SUD. Twenty three veterans received acupuncture during ten weeks and another twenty three veterans received the relaxation response (RR). Twenty one veterans attended usual care.

 As a result, this research implicated that acupuncture may be used in SUD treatment. The degree of craving significantly decreased after receiving acupuncture and the RR. The veterans received acupuncture and the RR reported that the degree of craving and anxiety which caused by SUD was lesser in the veterans that did not have either acupuncture or the RR. Moreover, the research was designed for the group of veterans abused alcohol and at least three different illicit drugs. So, this implicated that acupuncture is also suitable for multidrug abusers (in fact, the most abusers adopt multiple drugs).

 In spite of all of the beneficial findings, the effectiveness of acupuncture is still in question. In addition, the mechanism of acupuncture is not medically proven. Some argue that the effectiveness merely relies on the placebo effect. This argument has a supportive fact that the degree of craving and anxiety were scored by the participants. There is no actual measurement for the craving and anxiety levels. The scores may be not precise and exact.

Abstract

Reference

Chang, B.-H., & Sommers, E. (2014). Acupuncture and relaxation response for craving and  anxiety reduction among military veterans in recovery from substance use disorder. The American Journal on Addictions, 23(2), 129-136. doi: 10.1111/j.1521-0391.2013.12079.x