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Using needles — not bullets — to solve the drug problem
October 6, 2017


On-going free NADA Protocol ear acupuncture community clinic last July 27 at the top floor of the barangay hall of Brgy. Pinagkaisahan, Cubao, Quezon City. -- NADA Philippines - Home | Facebook

By Pola Esguerra del Monte
Multimedia Editor

“You must remember that those who are already (using) shabu for almost one year, they are dead. They are the living walking dead. They are of no use to society anymore.” — Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte in a press conference on Aug. 21, 2016

This is what has become of many of those the President described as the walking dead. They have been murdered, bleeding out on the streets, their deaths triggered by alleged involvement in drugs.

But inside Quezon City’s massive 328,646-hectare Barangay Culiat — which has over 15 depressed areas — volunteers from the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) Philippines walk towards the third floor of the Barangay Hall to pierce drug surrenderees, not with bullets, but with needles.

Since July last year, acudetox specialists, or ADSes, through a partnership between NADA Philippines, barangays, and institutions such as the Santa Rafaela Maria House of Spirituality, have been providing relief to former drug addicts through acupuncture: a form of alternative medicine which involves the insertion of needles into the body, and a key component of traditional Chinese medicine. For this particular mission, they use five-point acupuncture for detox, using five needles that hit points that correspond to organs responsible for detoxifying.

During their pilot mission in Barangay Culiat, they treated 122 patients over three days. They also trained some residents to do the protocol.

On the first day, there was silence. ADSes reported that the patients were non-conversant, except when they were asked questions. There was anxiousness in their eyes, and a level of paranoia: some asked if the needles were tracking devices.

On the second day of treatment, changes were observed. The patients walked in calmer and were more relaxed, noting that they had better sleep. They began divulging details of their personal lives, opening up on how and where they got their supply of drugs. A number of them also reported experiencing excessive sweating and having a distinct body odor that they could not explain which the ADSes believed were the detoxifying effects of the five-point ear acupuncture.

FROM THE BRONX
This five-point acu-detox is known internationally as the NADA protocol; it was brought to the country by Janet P. Paredes, founder and board president of NADA Philippines, from its birthplace at the Lincoln Recovery Center in the Bronx, New York.

Back in 2003, Ms. Paredes was a counselor working for a non-governmental organization and a licensed practitioner of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) acupuncture, who had drug addiction and alcoholism cases arriving at her desk. She asked herself, “Is there a shorter modality of acupuncture that I could combine with counseling?” Her curiosity led her to Bronx-based Dr. Michael Smith, long-time director of the Lincoln Recovery Program and NADA founder, who, after being impressed by Ms. Paredes’ persistence to learn the ropes, provided her with a scholarship.

“Parang Tondo ’yan (It was like Tondo),” was how Ms. Paredes described the Bronx she went to in 2004. Unlike New York City’s famous Manhattan, the Bronx, she recalled, was a city filled with garbage and the threat of danger.

From Monday to Saturday, she would take the subway from Manhattan to the Lincoln Recovery Center, which was housed in a building that used to be the New York Department of Health. In its three floors were a clinic, counseling services, and a literacy program for drug dependents and alcoholics. Treatments were open to the public and given for free, thanks to funding from the Federal Government.

“Everyone you would see there were Latinos and African-Americans. You will not see a white American there because the Bronx is a totally different part of New York,” she described. “Some are referred by drug courts. Some are referred by other NGOs (nongovernment organizations). Some are on parole. Pwede sila bumalik sa prison (they could be returned to prison) if they do not engage in the treatment protocol kaya mandated ’yung kanilang treatment (since their treatment is mandatory). So kailangan talaga pumunta sila otherwise ’di sila papakawalan (They really needed to go otherwise, they wouldn’t be set free).”

“Inside the clinic,” Ms. Paredes continued, “there would be 60 chairs in a circle. There’s a table in the middle, and that’s where we sat. Patients would arrive early in the morning, and we’d start at 7:30 a.m. and end at 1:30 p.m.”

Before getting treated, patients would have to raise their hand as a sign that they were ready. “Kasi yung iba, papasok na galit na galit (This was because some of the patients would enter the clinic full of rage),” she explained. “Rule ’yan ng clinic (that was the clinic’s rule): you have to settle down. You have to settle down before you are given a clinician.”

According to Ms. Paredes, the NADA protocol was first discovered by a Hong Kong neurosurgeon who operated on a drug dependent using three of these points and with the aid of a machine. After the operation, they found that the patient’s craving for drugs and alcohol was alleviated. Dr. Smith found out about it and adopted it at the Lincoln Recovery Center which, back in the 1970s, had no means of detoxification and was dependent on the use of methadone to treat addicts’ withdrawal symptoms. He added the additional acupuncture points that completed the NADA protocol as it is known today. At first, they supplemented this treatment with methadone, reducing the synthetic drug dosage slowly until it was all ear acupuncture.

Once a patient was ready, the clinicians went to work. Using five fine-gauge, sterilized, one-time use stainless steel needles just under the skin, clinicians targeted five points: the sympathetic point, which is associated with pain-killing; the shenmen point, which calms the mind, helps with sleep and nervous tension, and lowers blood pressure; the kidney point, which aids in digestion and is also associated with the calming of fear and improvement of willpower (in Chinese medicine, organs of the body are associated with specific emotions; imbalance in these emotions are said to cause illness); the liver point, which lifts depression, strengthens digestion, improves blood circulation, and helps aches and pains; and finally, the lung point, which controls breathing, cleanses skin, stops diarrhea, and aids the patient in letting go mentally.

“Knock-out ’yan pagkatapos (they are knocked out by the end),” Ms. Paredes said.

Her experience at the Lincoln Recovery Center sparked a fire in Ms. Paredes to not just use this protocol for her counseling, but to introduce it to drug rehabilitation centers.

But unlike the patients in the Bronx who came in the clinic filled with anger, the cases in the local rehab centers are the opposite: “Ang babait. Ang tatahimik (They are so good, so quiet),” she said. “Para kaming nagbibigay sa zombie. (It was as if we were treating zombies.)”

She would later on discover this was due to anti-depressants — prescription drugs used to treat major depressive disorders, as well as, in some cases, addiction.