History Main / DrFeelgood

Sometimes a BackAlleyDoctor, sometimes an otherwise respectable doctor, Dr. Feelgood serves as a catalyst for another character's dangerous or unethical prescription drug habit. They may have promised to "do no harm," but at the end of the day, they either are oblivious to the fact that the patient has a problem, or they just don't care.

* ''Literature/NakedLunch'' by William S. Burroughs: The County Clerk recounts a conversation with his local pharmacist:
-->"'Well,' Doc says, 'there was a feller in here this morning. City feller. Dressed kinda flashy. So he's got him an RX for a mason jar of morphine... Kinda funny looking prescription writ out on toilet paper... And I told him straight out: "Mister, I suspect you to be a dope fiend." '\\
"'"I got the ingrowing toenails, Pop. I'm in agony."' he says.\\
"'"Well," I says, "I gotta be careful. But so long as you got a legitimate condition and an RX from a certified bona feedy M.D., I'm honored to serve you." '

* "Mother's Little Helper," by Music/TheRollingStones, is about [[TheSixties 1960s mothers]] needing to take prescription "uppers" to keep up with all their daily duties. It includes a warning about overdoses of prescription pills.

The TropeNamer is the Music/MotleyCrue song, [[ThisIndexIsNotAnExample though the title character is not literally a doctor]]. Not to be confused with the Music/ArethaFranklin song or the British pub rock band.

* Music/{{WASP}} has "Doctor Rockter" from the ConceptAlbum ''Music/TheCrimsonIdol''

* ''Series/ThirtyRock'' has Dr. Leo Spaceman (pronounced [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay Spa-CHEH-man]]), first introduced prescribing "wildly experimental medication" to Tracy Jordan. When Liz calls him (due to Tracy Jordan flipping out from all his meds), he asks Liz if there are any medications that she'd like.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Dr. George Nichopoulos ([[NamesTheSame also known as]] [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Dr. Nick]])[[note]]Dr. Nick of The Simpsons was based in part on him[[/note]], who prescribed Music/ElvisPresley drugs from 1967 until his death in 1977. "Dr. Nick" gave Elvis his ultimately fatal supply. It was noted at his trial that in the first eight months of 1977 he had prescribed Elvis 10,000 doses of amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, laxatives, and hormones. He was found not guilty and the state of Tennessee even allowed him to keep his medical license until 1983, when it was pulled for overprescribing.
* Music/MichaelJackson seems to have accessed pain killers through several of these, and a particularly unethical one, Conrad Murray, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and grievous negligence in his death by prescribing a surgical anesthetic as a sleep aid.
* One of the strangest is the London dentist who, after giving [[Music/TheBeatles John Lennon and George Harrison]] their checkup, invited them for late-night coffee. [[IntoxicationEnsues The coffee was spiked with LSD]]. They both liked it enough that they thanked him.
* Music/TheBeatles song "Dr. Robert" was about the real-life New York City doctor Max Jacobson (despite the [[UsefulNotes/NationalHealthService National Health]] reference) whose nickname was the TropeNamer. He got involved with JFK, giving him several controversial treatments. Some of these involved illegal drugs such as methamphetamines. Many of Kennedy's medical problems and treatments were not declassified for some time afterward.
* The doctors in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany who weren't a MadDoctor were usually one of these instead (often both). Germany's early successes in the war were in part due to the soldiers being prescribed gargantuan quantities of meth [[PsychoSerum to remove their need for sleep and ability to feel pain]]. Hitler's own personal physician Theodor Morell was quite the candyman, which probably explains quite a bit- he was giving Hitler daily injections of cocaine and opioids, and then Hitler would formulate his military plans while he was high.
* This was the ''modus operandi'' of infamous SerialKiller Dr. Harold Shipman, deliberately getting his patients addicted to prescription painkillers until he finally killed them by overdose. Much was made of the fact that his mother had apparently depended heavily on morphine for pain relief during the final months before she succumbed to cancer, various armchair psychologists speculating about the effect this might have had on her son at an impressionable age, but the fact that so many of his victims ended up leaving him large amounts of money suggests a more mundane explanation. The truth will remain a mystery for the ages as Shipman hanged himself in his prison cell without ever giving anyone a straight answer about his motives.
* Many wars, from the American Civil War to WWII, resulted in loads and loads of opiate addicts because opiates were used as painkillers to treat wounded soldiers. Post-war, doctors usually kept prescribing those ex-soldiers opiates.
* In Russia, the traditional local version of this trope involves the doctor supplying his buddies or clients with medical alcohol. In Russia, it's not legal to sell pure, everclear-like alcohol in shops, and drugstores only sell it with a prescription. The doctor either provides such a prescription or flat out steals ethanol from the hospital and sells it on the black market.
* French SerialKiller [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Petiot Marcel Petiot]] was a doctor who attracted the attention of French medical authorities by prescribing drugs to notorious junkies. It was before he committed all the murders for which he is remembered today.
* The opioid/heroin addiction crisis in the United States was partly caused by these in the 90s and 2000s, operating "pill mills" where they prescribed and distributed addictive painkillers like an assembly line without examining patients properly and billed government and private health insurance for it. Efforts to clamp down on this have mostly succeeded but have also made it harder for people who legitimately need painkillers to get them.
* Back during the early days of [[UsefulNotes/TheRoaringTwenties Prohibition]] it was legal for a person to drink alcohol if it was recommended by a doctor, and even then within a certain limit -- [[LoopholeAbuse it was not unusual for entire families to develop "sicknesses" that could only be "cured" by drinking some alcohol]] that some very helpful doctors would prescribe.
* SerialKiller Efren Saldivar gained notoriety for killing at least six[[note]]Some estimates list his kill count at over 200, though this is hard if not impossible to prove due to some of the victims having been cremated[[/note]] patients by injecting a paralytic drug which led to respiratory and/or cardiac arrest while working as a respiratory therapist. Saldivar was able to walk away from the murders despite an initial confession, as no damming evidence against him could be presented to court due to the fact that some of the compounds like succinylcholine chloride and morphine quickly decompose to harmless compounds. Pancuronium (brand name Pavulon) was used in six murders, and was thus found in tissue samples gathered from some of the victims, leading to his arrest and life imprisonment; had he not pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain, he would have ended up [[HoistByHisOwnPetard sharing the same fate]] as his victims through lethal injection.
* Dr. George Zahorian, ringside doctor for the Wrestling/{{WWF}}, convicted of supplying wrestlers with steroids. Generally considered to have been a fall guy for company policies that went [[Wrestling/VinceMcMahon all the way to the top]].
[[/folder]]

[[DiscreditedTrope Dealer doctors are on a fast track to becoming a distant memory of yesteryear]], as since the advent of the Internet and large scale computing, many national health authorities proceeded to fight this practice directly by implementing systems that electronically track a physician's prescribing history and flag anything suspicious. This has worked so well, that this trope has actually veered into the opposite -- there have been cases of doctors withholding narcotics from legitimate pain patients for fear of appearing like a Dr. Feelgood.

-->--'''Music/TheBeatles''', "[[Music/RevolverBeatlesAlbum Doctor Robert]]"

* Dr. Spaceman (pronounced [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay Spa-CHEH-man]]) from both ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'' and ''Series/ThirtyRock''.

* The doctors in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany who weren't a MadDoctor were usually one of these instead (often both). Germany's early successes in the war were in part due to the soldiers being prescribed gargantuan quantities of meth [[PsychoSerum to remove their need for sleep and ability to feel pain]]. Hitler's own personal physician was quite the candyman, which probably explains quite a bit- he was giving Hitler daily injections of cocaine and opioids, and then Hitler would formulate his military plans while he was high.

-->-- Music/TheBeatles, "[[Music/RevolverBeatlesAlbum Doctor Robert]]"

-->-- Music/TheBeatles, "[[Music/{{Revolver}} Doctor Robert]]"

-->-- Music/TheBeatles, "Doctor Robert"