Jennifer Kehl recalled how a nervous woman complaining of abdominal pain showed up to the White Bird Clinic in Eugene worried she was about to start using drugs again. The woman asked to have five needles put in her ears.
Kehl, an acupuncturist, told The Lund Report she placed the needles in the ears of the woman, who stopped scanning the room and became calm and focused after 45 minutes.
As Oregon’s scarcity of behavioral health services continues, acupuncturists and advocacy groups want to increase the use of the “five-needle protocol,” an acupuncture technique developed in the 1970s that some research suggests reduces cravings for drugs. The needles cost 70 cents each, and supporters say that with non-acupuncturists able to administer it after a weekend-long training, it’s an easy and beneficial way to serve disadvantaged communities.
Oregon lawmakers are considering House Bill 2143, which would allow someone who is not an acupuncturist to administer the five-needle protocol if they have completed an approved training program. More than half of states already have similar laws in place.
“It can make a huge difference in people’s lives,” Whitsitt Goodson, an acupuncturist at Portland’s Working Class Acupuncture and an instructor, told The Lund Report. “At the same time, it’s just this very simple, straightforward little thing.”
Oregon has seen overdoses deaths rise in recent years partially fueled by the proliferation of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Meanwhile, the state faces a shortage of drug treatment services. Providers are eager to avail themselves of any tool they can use to help patients grappling with addiction.
Some research has questioned the effectiveness of the five-needle protocol. But recent legislation broadening the protocol’s use in Arizona and Virginia easily passed those states’ Legislatures.
“I know this is not a cure all, but it’s a tool in the toolbox that can complement other healing practices."
In Oregon, supporters testified at a hearing for the bill in January and it currently faces no formal opposition. It’s unclear how much it would cost.
The Oregon Association of Acupuncturists is neutral on the bill, avoiding a potential conflict. Currently the method can only be employed by licensed acupuncturists.
Amber Reding-Gazzini, board president of the association, told The Lund Report her organization is working on an amendment to the bill that would standardize its training requirements and put the Oregon Medical Board in charge of overseeing them.
She said the protocol has been used in disadvantaged communities before acupuncture was a licensed profession. She said she understood the bill was seeking to deliver a service to groups of people who have historically been distrustful of the medical system.
“It would do a disservice for this to be a turf battle,” she said.
Unexpected effect
A Hong Kong neurosurgeon accidentally developed the protocol in the 1970s when he noticed that inserting needles into patients’ ears as preoperative anesthesia reduced their opioid cravings.
Community activists, including the Black Panthers, and health care providers would further develop the protocol years later at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx as it faced a heroin epidemic and a lack of medical services. The National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, founded in 1985, later standardized the protocol. It has since been used to help people cope with the trauma of natural disasters.
In Oregon, overdose deaths have disproportionately affected Black and Native communities.
In response, the Native American Youth and Family Center Action Fund and the People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture Technical Institute developed HB 2143. The groups convinced state Rep. Rob Nosse, a Portland Democrat who chairs the Oregon House Behavioral Health and Health Care Committee, to sponsor it.
“It would do a disservice for this to be a turf battle."
During the bill’s hearing in January, interns from POCA Tech administered the protocol to lawmakers as they listened to testimony on the bill. State Rep. Lesly Muñoz, D-Gervais, asked how long they would leave the needles in. Winona Vaitekunas, an acupuncturist testifying on the bill, said sessions typically lasted between 15 and 45 minutes. She added that “seeds” can be taped to pressure points as an alternative to needles and for use in between sessions.
“I know this is not a cure all, but it’s a tool in the toolbox that can complement other healing practices,” William Miller, executive director of NAYA Action Fund, told lawmakers.
The protocol is especially needed in indigenous and communities of color “where impacts of historical trauma and systemic racism and health care inequities continue to drive our behavioral health crises,” Miller said. Allowing more people to administer the protocol will expand “culturally grounded treatment and meet people where they’re at.”
A sense of calm
After sitting in traffic for a half hour during a cold morning in January, this reporter agreed to have needles stuck in his ears at Hillsboro Wellness, the clinic owned by Reding-Gazzini and her husband, Patrick Gazzini.
Gazzini said he looks for the ear’s curves, triangles and other “anatomical landmarks” to find where to insert the paper-thin needles.
Each needle causes a brief pinching sensation, followed by the tingling of nerves and the burst of a calming sensation. There was also the lingering uncertainty that it was all a placebo, even though stress over a coming deadline was lessened.
Gazzini said the protocol quickly calms the nervous system, and is intended to stimulate five stimulation points that shift the body from a “fight or flight” response mode to “rest and digest.” Even if someone performed the protocol incorrectly, it might hurt but would not cause serious injury.
Supporters of the bill say that the protocol has helped them overcome anxiety or other mental health issues. Others say it helped them stop smoking or cut back on drinking.
But research on the protocol’s effectiveness is not conclusive. A study in 2000 published by a journal of the American Medical Association found evidence that people being treated for cocaine abuse who received the protocol were less likely to use the drug. However, an expert acupuncturist’s study in 2004 could not definitively say that the protocol was an effective treatment for cocaine abuse.
“It can make a huge difference in people’s lives. At the same time, it’s just this very simple, straightforward little thing.”
Nearly half of the patients in an NIH-funded study in 2002 reported that acupuncture reduced their desire to drink. But the study found that acupuncture did not make a “significant contribution over and above” conventional treatment.
Researchers representing the national group that advocates and trains for the method have also conducted several studies that conclude that it has benefits, One said it “is not a stand-alone procedure but a psychosocial intervention that affects the whole person and can augment outcomes from other treatment modalities.”
The bill is supported by CODA, Inc., an addictions treatment provider, which has partnerships with Working Class Acupuncture, a low-cost clinic, and its affiliated training program.
Goodson, an acupuncturist and instructor at POCA Tech, said he works a shift once a week at one of CODA’s residential detox facilities where he offers the protocol to patients as they take their dose of Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction.
He said he’s seen stress “melt away” from patients as they receive the protocol, becoming so relaxed they sometimes fall asleep. Some tell him it’s their favorite part of the week.
