As a doctor, I didn’t think much of acupuncture. Then the opioid crisis arrived

...Novella's position is that acupuncture is a placebo, and that the question is whether it is effective enough to be useful.

Placebos, permissions, rituals, all tools are nothing more than the expressions of an individual who carries the belief that they will work for the believer. If Novella wants to call acupuncture a placebo, go right ahead, he is correct. If you find that acupuncture works for you, is within your own belief systems, go right ahead, you are correct.

It is only a subjective, i.e. my experience, but it gave me the "knnowledge" that acupuncture is not a placebo. Due to a harsh reaction to a certain kind of medicine my nervous system was harmed by iatrogenic damage years ago. When I was in a better patch of this horrendous experience, I had two sessions of acupuncture, because having had good sessions before (long before I had the reaction), I thought I could increase my wellbeing and help my system to heal. That was a dead wrong conclusion as I felt much worse after the first session. I did not attribute the worsening to the acupuncture, though, and had the second session a few days after the first one. After this session, I felt worse than ever before and had terrible symptoms abound.
In my eyes, this is only explainable by a real effect of the acupuncture. Could not have been a placebo effect as it was negative, and no nocebo effect as I had no negative feelings towards the sessions due to my positive experiences before. I didn't even connect my worsened symptoms to the acupuncture before the 2nd session.