Why I Left Naturopathic Medicine

The first time I met with my current therapist, I told her that I needed to “word vomit” to get everything out of my head and my heart lest I be tempted to hold back. What followed in the next hour was a psychological purge of every unvoiced word of shame, doubt, and self-hatred I felt for wasting my time, money, and energy on a degree in naturopathic medicine. By the end, I was nearly crying and my therapist looked like she’d been hit by a truck. I felt worn out but hopeful. I knew there was more to say and unpack, but I’d finally told someone the thing that I had been afraid of saying for years: I hate being a Naturopathic Doctor.

THE DUAL DOCTORATE PROGRAM

I came to naturopathic medicine indirectly. Chinese Medicine, specifically acupuncture, was my first love. I learned about it when I was twelve, and when I was a teenager it was the only thing that could successfully manage my debilitating migraines. I started learning Mandarin at fifteen and every course I took for my bachelor’s degree was with Chinese Medicine in mind. An acupuncturist that I interned with at seventeen happened to be a Naturopathic Doctor (ND) as well, and I got it into my head that I needed to do both.

I attended a program in Portland, Oregon that offered both programs at the same time. The Classical Chinese Medicine program was of particular interest to me, more so than post-Maoist Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) taught at other schools. It seemed like an amazing opportunity: Rather than doing each four-year doctorate degree separately, I could do both in six years. The programs were structured such that the first two years were mostly the ND program, the second two years were an equal mix of both, and the last two years were mostly Chinese Medicine. And so in 2016, after six years of study and practice, I walked away with a doctorate in naturopathic medicine and both a masters and a doctorate in Chinese Medicine.

This was a mistake.

There’s a lot that I regret about my choice to do both doctorates, but first and foremost is that by the time that I got to the bulk of my Chinese Medicine courses, which I’d been looking forward to since I was twelve years old, I was horribly burnt out. There is so much information that I wasn’t able to retain due to stress-induced dissociation and panic attacks. I’m still processing my grief over how much I missed out on.

The Chinese Medicine program at my alma mater was not without its flaws: micro cults of personality around some of the white male teachers, emotionally abusive supervisors, and blatant cultural appropriation were all obstacles I had to navigate. But the pros outweighed the cons. There were some truly wonderful instructors in my Chinese Medicine program, many of whom were Chinese immigrants who had been practicing for longer than I’d been alive. The pre-Maoist lens they taught from gave me a foundation that many others in my field lack. And of course, Chinese Medicine is an expansive living tradition with much stronger roots than the cobbled mess that is naturopathic medicine.

The Chinese Medicine field in the West also desperately needs to be pruned, uprooted, and replanted, but there are other scholars who are already telling that story far better than I could.

NATUROPATHIC MEDICAL SCHOOL

On its surface, my naturopathic medical education was solid primary care. We learned anatomy and physiology, immunology, biochemistry, clinical diagnosis, labs and imaging, standards of care, clinical nutrition and herbalism, physiotherapy, and so on. Anatomy lab remains one of my favorite experiences. I still tell anecdotes shared by many of my teachers and refer to my class notes. As a result, I have much stronger Western biomedical knowledge than many of my peers in Chinese Medicine and counseling fields.

That being said, there were plenty of obvious issues. For one, it takes a lot to admit that I was wrong about the efficacy of homeopathy, a mainstay of the field that’s still tested on the national Naturopathic Physician Licensing Examination. I used to be a strong proponent of it until I shadowed multiple experienced homeopaths and never saw a treatment result that couldn’t be explained by placebo effects. I’m sure some of you reading this have had good results with homeopathy, but my experience with it has been lackluster. It is currently being phased out at my alma mater.

Fatphobia was also rampant, from the myriad “detox” diets scattered throughout the curriculum to placing the onus on the individual to buy expensive “natural” foods without consideration of accessibility, cost, or cultural relevance. Many of the male students were openly misogynistic in their dismissiveness of women’s lived experiences, an atrocity considering so many women turn to holistic medicine because of how conventional doctors fail to listen to them. And given that this was a white majority field in Portland (Oregon), racism, antisemitism, and cultural appropriation were unavoidable.

I tried to focus on what was useful and evidence-based from my training: I got to do shifts on trans health, shifts in community clinics that provided free care for Spanish-speaking migrant workers, shifts where we successfully managed complex chronic illnesses and traumatic brain injury. I’m forever grateful to the fantastic Chief Medical Officer (CMO) who worked there while I was a student. I attended four shifts with her as my mentor and I genuinely believe that I wouldn’t have survived without her.

But when I left after six years and two doctorates, I was fried. I had endured abuse and gaslighting from clinical supervisors, fatphobia and misogyny, grueling 60-80 hour workweeks, seasonal affective disorder, deep depression with suicidal ideation, binge eating that led to an inflammatory chronic illness and changed my body in ways with which I’m still not comfortable, and a loss of my sense of self.

DOUBT SETS IN

After graduating I couldn’t leave the West Coast fast enough. I moved to New York for a job with an Osteopathic Doctor (DO) that I’d interned with for three years, only to find that he had been lying to me about the position the entire time. Instead, he grudgingly shoved me into a windowless side room two days a week while I struggled to do house calls and get referrals. I was horribly isolated.

This is when I started to doubt the naturopathic profession. I remember when a colleague sent me a debate on licensing naturopathic medicine between a practicing ND and a chemistry professor from McGill University. My colleague thought the ND was more convincing, but in actuality the chemistry professor had a far better argument for why the ND field needed to “clean house”. I was also in a Facebook group for NDs at the time and I didn’t have to look too hard to find proof of his arguments.

I discussed above how a lot of the education I received was solid, all things considered. However, outside of my schooling the field was a mixed bag. In addition to some wonderful Naturopathic Doctors that I’d still be proud to refer to, there were more than a few conspiracy theorists, staunch anti-vaxxers, and people practicing experimental treatments outside their scope of practice. One ND posted unsubstantiated conspiracy websites about chemtrails, another compared vaccination to sexual assault, and another used a pendulum to diagnose patients with Lyme Diseases.

The lack of critical thinking was astounding. I couldn’t understand this; Didn’t we learn good, holistic primary care medicine? Didn’t we learn the science behind immunology and vaccination, and vaccinate on the CDC schedule as per the standard of care in our school clinics? Didn’t we learn proper diagnostic protocol with case history, labs, and imaging? Didn’t we learn how to blend both nutrition and pharmacology to the benefit of our patients, in such a way that educated them and respected their autonomy, rather than vilifying life-saving medications? Where was all this nonsense coming from?

PHILADELPHIA

When my lease was up at the end of the year in 2017 I packed myself up again and moved back to Philadelphia. I couldn’t have made a better decision. I found a job with a wonderful acupuncturist. I met two NDs who talked me through the realities of practicing in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is an unlicensed state, and there is no real legal oversight for NDs. NDs are marked as “registered” on the licensing map, but that means nothing in terms of regulation. The only ND program on the East Coast at Bridgeport University was closing down. I emailed a former mentor for support and he confessed to me that the field was likely dying. Finding interested patients who understand what a Naturopathic Doctor is while also navigating the unlicensed scope of practice felt daunting, and possibly unethical. Was it worth it? At this point I wasn’t so sure.

I was also coming to terms with the fact that I had no interest in primary care. I wanted to dedicate more of my practice to Chinese Medicine and I wanted to focus on a specialty in mental health. I went to a psychology conference and felt lit up in a way that I hadn’t in years. I did a certification in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I started researching psychology degrees and discussed dropping my ND with my therapist. Using the term “Naturopathic Doctor” to describe myself started to feel distasteful. I cried a lot.

I remember attending a monthly meetup for Functional Medicine practitioners, wherein I guest lectured on the difference between Naturopathic Doctors eligible for licensure (I still held my license in Connecticut at the time) and “Traditional” Naturopaths, who could either be excellent clinical herbalists or could be dangerously untrained graduates of scam correspondence schools. It was a popular talk, and yet I was demoralized by how little they knew about my field, and how little infrastructure there seemed to be.

Afterwards I was approached by an attendee who tried to convince me that he had cured his friend’s cancer with his homemade fermented cabbage juice. That was the last meeting I ever attended.

THE MASTERMIND

In 2018, I joined my first (and last) mastermind with a business coach. I worked with her because she was also an ND and I hoped that she would help me navigate my doubts. In the first year I learned some worthwhile strategies for marketing in the digital realm – some of which I still use, some of which I’ve come to find ethically concerning. I regret that I somehow talked myself out of noticing red flags. I won't go into all of them, but the one that stands out was when I told her that I regretted getting my ND and was considering dropping my license, she replied that she “wanted to slap me”.

Despite this, I got caught up in the attention and coercive energy of our final meeting and signed up for a second year. It was downhill from the beginning. She seemed to care less about connecting with us and more about checking boxes, which was apparent in one-on-one calls wherein her previously attentive advice was replaced with practiced spiels. She invited guest speakers that had questionable medical practices and went out of her way to defend MLMs because one of the mastermind members was a DoTerra representative. She claimed that she shouldn’t have to cite her sources for medical claims because she had “Doctor” in front of her name. When I questioned this, she dug her heels in.

In January of 2019, I let my ND license lapse and cut ties to the profession. I felt so unburdened it was euphoric. I removed the title from my resume, from all of my marketing materials, and from my website. I removed the diploma from my office. I told referral sources about the changes in my practice. At the time I was in my first year of a masters in mental health counseling at UPenn, so couldn’t make all of the mastermind group calls. It turned out to be for the best because I was able to detach from my business coach as more and more warning signs cropped up. The mastermind ended in December of 2019, and to this day the only thing that made the second year worthwhile are the two lifelong friends I made. If you’re reading this, you know who you are.

THE WELLNESS TO ALT-RIGHT PIPELINE

Then the pandemic hit and everything unspoken was suddenly shouted. Loudly.

My now former coach tokenized her few Black acquaintances during the June 2020 protests while simultaneously getting bolder with anti-medication, anti-mask, and anti-vaccine rhetoric. Some of her posts included right-wing dog whistles. I cut off contact when she announced that she was moving to so-called “free speech” platform, Parler.

This behavior was by no means unique to her. Now on the outside looking in, I saw lines being drawn in the sand. While the white, cis-het, upper middle class nature of corporatized “wellness culture” has always been present, the pandemic made it very clear who in wellness and naturopathic medicine prioritized public health, and who lacked the critical thinking necessary to avoid a conspiracy theory spiral. Many of my former colleagues started capitalizing on their predominantly white, wealthy client base by selling expensive courses to “heal from 5G” or “claim sovereignty against vaccination”. This fear-mongering alongside explicit fatphobia, ableism (“only fat or sick people die from COVID”), and racism (vacationing in Mexico when impoverished Black and brown folks were at higher risk of dying from COVID), revealed the wellness industry’s diseased roots.

Much of this was communicated through social media. Social media algorithms prioritize outrage in order to drive views for advertisers and are known to drive people down far-right rabbit holes. And when people feel afraid and powerless, they are much more likely to fall victim to conspiracy theories. QAnon, the apex of conspiracy theories, quickly spread tendrils throughout spiritual, wellness, and wellness-adjacent fields. QAnon is notoriously built on a foundation of antisemitism, and it was horrific (though by this point, sadly unsurprising) to witness “love and light” spiritual and wellness influencers parrot antisemitic talking points.

I had gotten out just in time.

MOVING ON

This essay has been a long time coming.

In order to get here, I’ve had countless conversations with friends, mentors, and colleagues to help me work out my resentment toward this field and toward myself. I’ve been to a lot of therapy. I’ve reworked and pivoted my business model. I felt the most validated when I realized that I wasn’t the only one of my colleagues who wanted to drop their ND. One colleague, another ND LAc, left naturopathic medicine to practice Chinese Medicine exclusively. Another colleague has a beautiful pottery business. Others have found more restorative paths back to herbalism, and so on.

So why am I talking about this now? Because I’m finally happy with my work. I get to do two of my favorite things: Talk to people (counseling) and stick needles in them (acupuncture). I love teaching at the Won Institute for Graduate Studies, and doing my best to advocate for the students there. I love the freedom of running my own business, even if I didn’t get here how I thought I would. I love designing my website and connecting to amazing colleagues through social media and picking out new plants for my clinic space. I love going to seminars – I’ll be attending one in July for Internal Family Systems therapy, and it will be my first IRL seminar since before the pandemic. I love doing collaborations where I talk about kink and mental health, and I’m hoping to do more consulting work.

I’m now in a place where I can let myself settle. And if you’re feeling how I did, I hope that reading this has helped you feel less alone.