There is a healing oasis, six floors above the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Quiet jazz plays in a room with the lights set low and curtains partly closed.
One at a time, low-income or homeless patients take a turn sitting in front of acupuncturist Bill Sweeney. Many suffer from addiction or mental illness. He places acupuncture needles in points on their ears and scalp, points useful for treating their special problems, and then they go back to their chairs.
For the next forty-five minutes they will sit peacefully while the acupuncture does its work. This space has the feeling of meditation, sacred. No talking is allowed, to respect those who have gone into their quiet zone. Although one patient is obviously a junkie with eyes rolled back into his head, most of the half dozen people in this room have mental illness or serious pain-related problems. For one balding elderly woman, life has simply beaten her down. Yet a faint smile graces her face as she leans back and closes her eyes.
It’s a weekday morning at the community clinic at Glide Memorial Church, located in the heart of San Francisco’s rough Tenderloin district. Only blocks from the suits in the Financial District and the middle class tourists at Union Square, the Tenderloin is haven for homeless and addicts, or merely those who couldn’t catch a break from life – those who didn’t happen to chose the right parents.
Glide’s community service programs provide a ladder up, offering food, job training, and for those suffering from addiction or mental illness, Glide offers mental health care.
Westerners have come to know acupuncture as a medical treatment, but that is only the lowest of three purposes in old-school tradition. A second higher purpose was the general tune-up, especially at the change of seasons.
But the third and highest purpose of acupuncture was to raise spiritual awareness (techniques reserved for royalty and the religious classes). This turns out to be useful today for treating mental health and addiction issues.
This version ("auricular") uses areas on the ear called spirit points. Needles inserted at these
points, says Sweeney, will help with addiction, cravings, depression, panic, insomnia, stress-related disorders, and even memory loss or foggy thinking."Keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it consistent," nothing fancy, says Sweeney, in describing how to organize a group treatment. The treatment is similar for most patients, although each has a personal medical file.
Simply getting the homeless patient to show up reliably is a challenge but Glide has a high return rate, according to Sweeney. The patients know they can expect treatment the same mornings each week, relaxing in a quiet, warm, clean place. Because the homeless tend to distrust authority figures, word-of-mouth publicity brings many patients - Glide’s reputation is good.
The 38-year-old San Franciscan earned his early experience in the mid-1990s as one of the first acupuncturists treating patients at then-new programs at Glide as well as the San Francisco County Jail, the latter environment one he calls "hellish."
Inmates’ problems with addiction and mental health mirror those of Glide’s outpatients. But because they are cut off from access to crack or heroin, inmates are actively suffering withdrawal symptoms. They report this triggers "drug dreams," a kind of nightmare non-addicts can hardly imagine, but inmates say that ear acupuncture lessens this symptom.
Despite the large size of the group (as many as 60), inmates got the only peace and quiet of their day during the treatments – a break from the loud, chaotic County Jail. "I run into guys from the jail around town," Sweeney says. "I can be walking around the Tenderloin and I hear ‘Hey acupuncture man!’"
Sweeney became interested in holistic medicine while a student at San Francisco State in the early 1990s, but believes he was fortunate to get into a tutorial program with Angela Wu, one of the first wave of licensees in California in the 1970s. A master can only teach a tutorial program after 25 years experience, and then only two students at a time. Wu, who has a successful practice on Clement Street, had been in a serious accident on the Bay Bridge and during recovery resolved to take on students in the traditional one-on-one tutorial capacity – Sweeney was one of the students she called. He credits the mentor relationship for the quality of his experience.
In China, "Chairman Mao threw all this stuff out," says Sweeney, "and acupuncture got watered down. And the same thing with martial arts… Ironically, to study true Chinese arts today, you have to go to Taiwan, or New York, or San Francisco. Communist China is the last place you want to go."
Patient Lori Hampton visits the clinic several days a week for the treatment of pain from a broken neck, as well as hearing loss and diabetes. "I’ve been here about a year and a half," she says, "and people say I look younger, I look happy. This is clearing up major hearing problems I’ve had permanent since I was four, and I’m fifty." Hampton even has pain looking down stepping off a curb."This is the first year that music doesn’t hurt," she says, "so this is major stuff. There is room for humanity and creativity and all that, once the pain left. I was healed to be a woman again."
Sweeney doesn’t believe he has any special healing powers.
"People mention that I’m a healer, or whatever," Sweeney says, "but I always kind of shudder at that." Traditional Chinese Medicine is less mystical than people think, he suggests.
"Our job is to put the body into the best place possible where it can heal itself," he says. "Our job is to find where people’s general imbalance is and where it stems from." The idea is that symptoms arise in the greater relationship between the various parts of the body, or in the diet.
"Ultimately," Bill Sweeney says, "Traditional Chinese Medicine is about self-responsibility," a key factor in whether the homeless and addicted are able to leave the street and pull their futures together.
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Further information on Glide Memorial Church’s community clinic and service-related volunteer opportunities for the poor or homeless will be found at www.glide.org, or by calling (415) 674-6000. Glide is a very active church, and a schedule of worship and other experiences is on their web site.
For information about Bill Sweeney’s acupuncture practice, call (415) 203-4818 or visit www.billsweeneyacu.com, which also has information about traditional Chinese medicine. If you have questions or feedback for the author of this article, contact William Murphy at wcmurphy19@gmail.com or (650) 793-0770.
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