Rarely is the addiction the root of our problem.  Typically the addiction is the manifestation of a deeper, quieter, more secretive issue.  For instance, a person may have a deep feeling of separation, therefore they use alcohol (their particular drug of choice in this example) to feel closer to people.  This in turn becomes a repetitive step for individual to feel close, the use of alcohol, and thus the addiction starts.  After a while, to even feel close to oneself, the use of alcohol becomes the pattern in our behavior.

Chinese medicine is wonderful choic for addictions because of this example.  I remember when i started Chinese medical school.  I was interviewed and asked why i chose Chinese medicine over Western Medicine.  (i must say here, both medicines are amazing and wonderful, it was a personal choice for me) I told them that, in my opinion, that Chinese medicine looked at not only the problem, but the “why” of the problem.  Why do i hurt? Why do i have an addiction? Why do i have pain?  Those types of questions, to me, were just as important as the pain itself as the addiction itself.

Chinese herbal formulas are a great addition to any recovery process.  If you ask most addicts in recovery, or anybody for that reason,  ”what causes your addiction/ negative behavior?”. They will most likely have a “trigger”.  I “do this drug or that drug” when “this happens”, “when i feel this way”.  Chinese medicine looks at that first “trigger”.  Why do you feel (for example) stressed? anxious? alone? What is it about that “trigger” that cause the addiction process to cascade into a chain of events that is negative?

Chinese medicine will seek not only to help with the cravings that we have, a craving of this or that, but it will attempt to “heal” the “root” of our addiction; the loneliness, the anger, the stress, the separation.

These are amazing times!  Chinese medical formulas and its medical ideas can play an important role, an important piece, in ones recovery.  Its great, because now, the patients have choices.  They can add Chinese medicine, western medicine, therapy, meditation, (you can insert any healing modality here).  All these modalites work and help to keep the recovery process going strong.  No one person is the same as another, therefore our approach to recovery just be just as varied as each person is.

 

Tags: formula, herb, herbs, medicine

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Acupuncture/Herbs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.