Eastern medical treatments for Addiction

East meets West. Or is it the other way around? There is research showing that acupuncture could help cocaine addicts to quit, as reported by Reuters. According to a Yale University study, more than half of the cocaine addicts participating in the research tested free of cocaine at the end of acupuncture treatment, more than double the quitting rate of a control group. In this particular study, addicts were treated with acupuncture needles in their ears five days a week for eight weeks.

"Our study supports the use of acupuncture for cocaine addiction and shows that alternative therapies can be combined with the arsenal of Western treatments for fighting addiction," said Arthur Margolin, a Yale psychiatrist and principal investigator. Margolin said this was the first study of its kind, so additional research is needed.

Part of a holistic approach to addiction treatment involves a multi-pronged attack against the disease of addiction. That's what the best drug rehabs and best alcohol rehabs offer.

Auricular acupuncture has been shown to be beneficial in alcohol detox as well. I suspect that as more and more Eastern medicine practices are studied in a "western" scientific way, that we will find out that many Eastern practices are effective in ways that we had never imagined. The East has known it for thousands of years. We're a little slower.