Hi, I’m Sean. I love plants, and using plant medicine to help people, people like you!

 

It’s hard to say when my love affair with plants began. I suspect it was toddling around my mom’s garden stuffing every green thing I could find into my mouth, but since I can’t actually remember that, let’s just say it started in my high school ecology class. 

 

I did my earliest growing up in Southeast Iowa, where the corn was tall and the public schools were good. When I was a teenager my family moved to a small town in Northern California, where the mountains were even taller and the schools were…not as good. In my freshman year, I was already in A.P. classes with seniors. My parents, ever-confident in my academic abilities, thought it was a good idea to send me all the way to New England to the most challenging elite high school in the country. 

 

I went from being at the top of my math class at Mt. Shasta High to finding out that my math level was practically remedial at Phillips Exeter Academy. I had always done well at school simply for the sake of doing well, but at Exeter kids have a reason to succeed. They aspired to prestigious academic careers, or had House of Cards-esque plans for their political futures. Exeter offered a foot in the door to the Ivy Leagues, and from there to a high-earning career in medicine, law, or finance. But Exeter also asked the question: what do you want to learn? How can you make a difference? And for me, the answer wasn’t Harvard or Wall Street or Capital Hill. 

 

It was in Mr. Matlack’s ecology class that I found my reason, in the study of nature - the beautiful, complex, chaotic and interdependent web of all living things. I discovered the power of botany, which transformed a walk in the woods into an opportunity to learn, with a hundred new plant friends waiting to be identified, wondered at, and maybe even understood. 

 

I graduated from Exeter with honors, but I passed up the Ivy Leagues in favor of the redwoods of the California coast. I spent the summer before college at a wilderness survival school, running the mountains barefoot by day and sleeping on a bed of pine needles at night. Headwaters Outdoor School taught me about animal tracking, shelter building, and how to make a bowdrill fire, but it was once again plants that ignited my interest. It was there I was first introduced to using wild plants and herbs as medicine - first aid kits literally growing on trees - and I was hooked. The door to the rest of life opened wide, and, though I wasn’t yet fully aware of it, I took the first steps on the path I still walk today, a journey toward understanding the complex ecology of the human body, and how plant medicines can treat illness, prevent disease, and restore balance as we find harmony with our place in nature. 

 

I met my first bonafide herbalist mentor, Darren Huckle, during my first freshman year in college. He was a clinical herbalist trained in both Western herbalism and Traditional Chinese Medicine. I started by studying Western herbal medicine, a good place to begin as it is relatively simple to learn. But it soon became clear that anytime Darren was working on a difficult, chronic, or intractable case, the more mysterious Chinese herbal medicine was what he relied on to get the job done.

 

While I was deep in studying plant medicine down in Santa Cruz, things weren’t going so well at home. My step-dad was diagnosed with Hepatitis C during my last year in college. My family had always been into natural medicine, but most of what I grew up around was honestly not that effective - at least not for anything serious. And his situation was serious. He opted for conventional treatment with Interferon, the only medication offered for his strain of Hep C at the time. We were warned he could experience significant side effects such as suicidal thoughts or homidical rage. It wasn’t long before it became clear he was struggling with the treatment. He began to rapidly lose weight, his behavior became erratic, and eventually he suffered a psychotic break. All this, and two rounds of Interferon over the course of a year had failed to resolve his Hepatitis C. 

 

I was desperate to help. I graduated college early to move home, and I tried to do what I could, but it was too little and too late; my basic herbal medicine skills were clearly not enough. It was heartbreaking to watch him suffer, and to feel our family falling apart around him. I hated the feeling of knowing there was something just outside my realm of understanding that could have been the solution. I felt strongly that his situation could have been prevented or managed better, a feeling that was later confirmed by a liver specialist who advised that he never should have been given Inteferon given his family medical history. 

 

I learned that there were Chinese herbal medicine clinics successfully treating Hep C patients all over Asia and even some in California, but at that point it was too late for my step-dad. In the wake of his illness he became severely agoraphobic and wouldn’t leave the house, let alone travel to the Bay Area to be treated with herbs. 

 

I was devastated and defeated at not being able to help my step-dad. I went to my mentor and asked if he would teach me to treat difficult and serious conditions with herbal medicine. He told me I needed to pursue formal education in Traditional Chinese Medicine, so I could learn from a team of top teachers and clinicians in the field, and become licensed and board-certified. So that’s what I did. I found the best herbal medicine program in the U.S., and settled in for four years of deep learning in the art and science of the world’s oldest and most developed systematic method of plant medicine. I gained the skills I wished I had when my step-dad was so sick.

 

You might be wondering how Chinese herbal medicine fits into my love of plants and ecology. After all, most people today tend to associate anything emerging from China as industrial, cheap, and maybe even ecologically destructive. But you have to look at history and remember that the modern industrial era of China is less than a hundred years old. Traditional Chinese Medicine, on the other hand, connects us to an unbroken lineage of knowledge, a continuous process of development that goes back thousands of years. The level of understanding of plant properties and applications present in Traditional Chinese Medicine is so old and so deep that it rivals, and in many cases supersedes, the abilities of modern biochemical analysis.

 

Chinese Medicine was developed through a deep understanding and respect for nature, and  through living close to the earth and understanding that our body follows the same ecological principles as every other living thing. Over thousands of years, these herbalists developed a profound systematic method to understand, diagnose, and treat health conditions early and effectively. Chinese herbal medicine is neither guesswork, magic, nor rote learning. It is precise yet flexible, poetic but practical. It is all about paying close attention to patterns, seeing both the big picture and the tiniest detail, and, above all else, it is about the power of plants to help us heal. 

 

If you choose to come to me for help, know that I will always be in your corner, fighting for the best outcomes for your health with all the amazing tools of Chinese Herbal Medicine, the way I wish I had been able to do for my step-dad. I have successfully treated many difficult cases deemed impossible by other clinicians, and I do not give up easily. 

 

I hope you feel you know me a little better, and I look forward to meeting you.

  

Sincerely,  Sean  

 

Sean Dugan L.Ac. is a licensed and board-certified herbalist and acupuncturist. He holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine as well as a Diplomate in Chinese Medicine from the NCCAOM. He has studied under many Master Herbalists including Dr. Guohui Liu, Dr. Jimmy Wei-Yin Chang, Dr. Fang Zhang, Dr. Greg Livingston, and Darren Huckle L.Ac. Sean’s herbal medicine practice draws from both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Classical Chinese Medicine treatment methods, with a focus on clinical efficacy above all else. He has been treating patients with Chinese Herbal Medicine since 2013.