Addiction & Recovery Support · Hillcrest, San Diego
Classical Chinese medicine and Daoist alchemy as support through addiction and compulsion, walked alongside your recovery and care.
I am a licensed acupuncturist and Daoist alchemist, and I have walked my own long road with compulsion. For the better part of a decade I used food to numb what hurt, through an eating disorder it took therapy, time, and my own deep medicine work to move through. I tell you this because I am not speaking from a textbook. I know the particular grip of a pattern that promises relief and asks for everything in return, and I know it can loosen. If you want the longer story, it is in On being a gay healer, where I write about that part of my life openly.
If it were, you would have stopped already. You have tried, maybe many times. You know the substance or the behavior is costing you. You want it to end. But something stronger than a conscious decision keeps pulling you back.
Classical acupuncture sees this differently. The pull to use, the obsessive thinking, the inability to let go, these read as patterns held in the body, in the channels that govern thought and emotion, built to manage something that once felt unbearable. They are not a failure of character. The work meets those root patterns, the holdings and the loops that make using feel necessary, and as they loosen, your sense of who you are begins to shift with them.
Unresolved emotion gets stored in the body, and the compulsion to use, the mental loops, the automatic reaching are the body trying to manage what it holds. In this medicine, a few channel patterns tend to drive the behavior:
The work runs in two directions at once. The Luo channels release the stored charge the using has been managing, so the loops have less to feed on. The Divergent channels rebuild the reserves that years of the pattern have drained, so the spirit has solid ground to stand on again. One lets go of what was held; the other restores what was spent.
This is my toolbox: the channel systems of classical Chinese medicine and the deeper work of Daoist alchemy, which reaches the why beneath the pattern, the place where a craving is really a hunger for something else. When the holding has gone very deep, the Thirteen Ghost Points and the related alchemy treatments are built for exactly that.
You do not have to take my word that acupuncture belongs in recovery. A five-point ear protocol developed in the 1970s at Lincoln Hospital in New York, known as NADA, is used in recovery programs around the world to ease cravings, withdrawal, and stress, and it is much of the reason acupuncture is a familiar face in detox and treatment settings. The evidence behind it is supportive rather than the final word.
I want to be straight with you about my own practice, though: I do not use the NADA protocol. My work is classical Chinese medicine and Daoist alchemy, the channel systems and the roots. I point to NADA only because it shows plainly that this medicine has a real place in recovery, and my approach reaches even further into the why.
Let me be very clear about what this is and is not. I am not a substitute for medical detox, a treatment program, a therapist, or a doctor. If you are in the thick of it, those are the front line, and I will help you find them. What I offer sits alongside that care and supports it. I refer out readily, I work with your team, and I will tell you honestly when what you need is more than I provide. Reaching for help is not weakness. It is the first strong move.
If you need support now
SAMHSA national helpline, free and confidential, 24/7: 1-800-662-4357.
For disordered eating, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders, staffed by clinicians: 866-662-1235.
In a crisis, call or text 988 any time.
It tends to fit when:
It is not the right fit, at least not yet, when:
You do not need to have it sorted out to begin. Start with a conversation, and we will find out together whether this is the right support for where you are. If it belongs alongside other care, we will set it there. If somewhere else is the better first step, I will help you find it.
No. Many people begin while still using and reduce gradually as the cravings and compulsions ease. I meet you where you are, alongside whatever care you already have.
No, and it should not. Those are the front line, and for a serious addiction you deserve a full team. My work supports them, eases the body and reaches the deeper why, and I refer out readily. I work with your care.
No. NADA is good evidence that acupuncture helps in recovery, and it is used in programs worldwide. My own toolbox is classical Chinese medicine and Daoist alchemy, working the channel systems and the emotional roots rather than that protocol.
I hold that gently and within limits. Eating disorders carry real medical risk and need specialized care, so if that is what you are facing I will help you connect with it and can support you alongside that team. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline, 866-662-1235, is a good place to start. I have walked my own road with this, which I write about in On being a gay healer.
Long-held patterns often mean deeper depletion and more layers to unwind, so the work can take longer. Some people with long-standing patterns have found meaningful change through it, always alongside their broader care.
Not sure where to start? New patients may begin with a complimentary 15-minute consultation call.