Dr. Mutulu Shakur and the Lincoln Detox Center
Dr. Richard Taft receiving acupuncture from a patient-trainee at Lincoln Detox Center (Photo from Taft Family History).
The following is an excerpt from “Patients in Pain: The Rise of Acupuncture in the Opioid Epidemics,” a paper I wrote for The Opioid Epidemic in Historical Perspective: An Anthology in the fall of 2018. For the full essay, please visit here.
*NOTE: As I have continued to research these histories I have realized a number of inaccuracies with this previous article and the paper posted above — those inaccuracies are corrected here. Shakur, for example, was not a member of the Black Panther Party, but instead informally connected. I will continue to refine these articles and my own understandings as I continue learning from those who are part of this history. Thank you for joining me on this journey!
More information about Dr. Mutulu Shakur will be posted shortly — his family and friends also maintain a website which has updates on his health and legal status. Please visit here.
Dr. Mutulu Shakur (Photo from Friends & Family of Mutulu Shakur)
The Rise of Acupuncture Activism
Within the current opioid epidemic, alternative practitioners dedicated to social activism are prominent actors in spreading acupuncture to marginalized populations affected by the crisis, especially due to the socioeconomic and racial dimensions of the epidemic.[1] In doing so, they are introducing the alternative therapy to people who may have never previously heard of or used the practice. This current movement is led by acupuncturists as well as practitioners within organizations such as the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) and People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture (POCA).[2] Although differing organizations, inspirations of the origins of NADA and POCA can be traced back to the fascinating story of civil rights era revolutionary groups and their use of acupuncture during the drug epidemic of the late 20th century – a history that has largely remained outside of the conventional narrative of acupuncture in the U.S.
On November 10, 1970, the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, and other revolutionaries established The People’s Drug Program at the Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx.[3] One of the team members, Mutulu Shakur, a prominent member of the Republic of New Afrika, witnessed his sons recover from car accidents with the aid of acupuncture. Intrigued, he sought to learn more about the practice, and soon came across literature that suggested acupuncture’s potential efficacy in treating substance use disorders. Shakur and others such as Walter Bosque de Rio soon began to learn how to practice acupuncture and came together at Lincoln.[4] At the height of the drug epidemic in the 1970s, the Lincoln Detox Center, as the program came to be known, functioned as a community gathering place that offered “acupuncture treatment, political education and community service.”[4] The program used methadone to help patients through the initial stages of withdrawal, and eventually weaned them off any drugs by using acupuncture to achieve full recovery.[5] One Young Lord member, Vicente “Panama” Alba, describes the Center’s unexpected popularity:
From the first day… we had a constant influx of people every day seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came – I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people – as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.[6]
In the midst of a drug epidemic that devastated local communities both physically and morally, the Center and acupuncture provided hope for the patients, and “the potential of self-determination.”[7] The practice restored a level of agency in the hands of patients, and it was “an important contribution to that struggle” against the drug crisis. Many patients even became practitioners, and the movement began to spread as a “barefoot doctor acupuncture cadre” where “brothers and sisters [were taught] the fundamentals of acupuncture to serious acupuncture, how it was used in the revolutionary context in China.”[8]
Less than ten years later, on November 30, 1978, a task force of 200 police officers closed down the Lincoln Detox Center. State officials claimed that the drug program was “badly mismanaged and that program leaders had threatened reprisals if there was any attempt to oust them.”[9] Mickey Melendez, the program coordinator at the Center at the time, argued that the government made the program into a “scapegoat” for the rest of the hospital’s medical and administrative chaos. Shakur believed the government and policymakers found acupuncture to be a threat:
Acupuncture in the hands of the revolutionary-minded, particularly addressing addiction, was an intervention that the government was not willing to accept at the time because it attacked and exposed the complicity of the government in imposing chemical warfare on certain segments of the community. We weren’t only providing medical care and exposing chemical warfare, we were challenging Western occidental medicine by Eastern medicine and natural healing.[10]
Patients protested the closure and more than seventy supporters gathered at the hospital. They chanted “Hands off Lincoln Detox,” holding signs that read “Reopen Detox, no methadone maintenance.”[11] Without the Center, patients could only turn to methadone-centered recovery clinics.
During this era, patients from Black, Latino or indigenous communities strongly disfavored methadone treatments. The activist publication, White Lightning, which partnered with the Lincoln Center wrote that, “the armies of slum-lords, script doctors, organized crime, greedy drug companies, methadone pushers, corrupt cops, and producers of rot-gut wine are plundering our communities” and warned of the dangers of methadone, from “brainwave changes” to “crib deaths.”[12] Many patients viewed methadone as simply another drug and inherently distrusted highly regulated pills that “white doctors, in white coats, in white hospitals” prescribed. [13] When the Lincoln Detox Center relocated to a new building, the program rid of methadone treatments completely and focused on detoxification through acupuncture.
In 1985, Michael Smith, a director of Lincoln Detox, founded the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) and formalized the NADA protocol. Influenced by a paper published by a Hong Kong doctor on the efficacy of stimulating a few ear acupoints for treating opium withdrawal symptoms, Smith helped finalize a specific five-point auricular treatment to mitigate cravings and emotional distress from addiction and withdrawal. [14]The earlier revolutionaries had determined the first few points. The practitioners at the Detox Center pioneered the use of the protocol, and the method quickly spread around the country. However, this particular form of acupuncture never entered mainstream public awareness. Instead, acupuncture’s second wave of popularity followed Reston’s article, which led to the practice being “mostly taken in by mainstream America… stripped of its revolution roots and …was focused into an upper middle-class commodity.”[15] Indeed, licensed private practitioners monopolized acupuncture.
Yet, NADA did not dissipate – far from it. With the efforts of many, the organization slowly but surely grew and exists well into current times. Lincoln Detox was renamed Lincoln Recovery Center in the 1990s and continued to offer training to anyone interested – from counselors, social workers, and nurses to medical doctors, correctional officers, acupuncturists and more.[16] To date, more than ten thousand have been trained in the five-point NADA protocol in North America.[17] Furthermore, trainees have come from all around the world, setting up NADA chapters upon returning to their respective home countries. From NADA GB, Finland, Norway, to Philippines, Tunisia, Japan, and more, it is estimated that at least twenty-five thousand around the world are trained in the protocol.[18] Projects address a wide range of patient populations – from prisoners in the United Kingdom to military personnel in India. The NADA protocol is employed by various practitioners and its history of community activism has inspired many.
Additional resources to check out:
Dope is Death (documentary and podcast series, 2020) by Mia Donovan
The People’s Detox (documentary, 2018) by Jenna Bliss
The Unusual Tale of Acupuncture, Racism, and African Americans in the USA by Dr. Tenisha Dandridge, L.Ac.
[1] Nabarun Dasgupta, Leo Beletsky, and Daniel Ciccarone, “Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to Its Social and Economic Determinants,” American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 2 (2018): pp. 182-186, https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2017.304187)
[2] Acupuncturists, community acupuncturists, and NADA practitioners are related in that they all utilize acupuncture needles, but there are differences in theories, practices, and licensing. Acupuncturists are licensed to use all points on the body. Some community acupuncturists are as well, although they may utilize only the distal points. The key difference between private and community acupuncturists is that the latter delivers treatments in groups of patients in a communal setting, on a sliding scale. NADA practitioners may be acupuncturists (private or community), or may simply be someone (recovery coach, prison officer, layperson) who is authorized to use the five-point NADA protocol.
[3] Greg Jones, A Radical History of Acupuncture in America (St. Pete Community Acupuncture, 2015). http://www.dandeliondancetheater.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/RadicalHistoryofAcupunctureinAmericaLargeFormat.pdf
[4]Mutulu Shakur, “2018 Interview about Acupuncture & The Opioid Crisis,” interview by Olga Khazan, Mutulu Shakur, November 19, 2018, accessed January 3, 2019, http://mutulushakur.com/site/2018/11/acupuncture-interview/.
[5] Jones.
[6] Ronald Sullivan, "Countercharges by Lincoln Drug Unit," The New York Times, November 30, 1978, , accessed December 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/1978/11/30/archives/countercharges-by-lincoln-drug-unit-fear-of-disturbance-eases.html.
[7] Jones. See also: https://newafrikan77.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/lincoln-detox-center-the-peoplez-drug-program/
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Sullivan.
[11] Shakur.
[12] Sullivan.
[13] Olga Khazan, "How Racism Gave Rise to Acupuncture for Addiction Treatment," The Atlantic, August 03, 2018, accessed December 10, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/08/acupuncture-heroin-addiction/566393/.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Jones.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Legislation around legal use of NADA is discussed below, in “For Alternative Practitioners.”
[18] “About NADA,” National Auricular Detoxification Association (National Auricular Detoxification Association, n.d.), https://acudetox.com/about-nada/)