History Main / DrFeelgood

* ''Series/FBIMostWanted'': Dr. Jason Brock, the VillainOfTheWeek in "Dopesick", is running a pill mill for [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels a biker gang]]. He writes prescriptions for opioids for the addicts the biker gang sends him as patients without even the most cursory examination: listing 'back pain' as the reason for prescription. The addicts fill the scripts, keep a percentage of the pills for their own use, and give the rest to the bikers to on-sell. Aside from the huge number of prescriptions written, the FBI are tipped off because all of his 'patients' pay cash.

* Dr. George Nichopoulos ([[NamesTheSame also known as]] [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Dr. Nick]]), who prescribed Music/ElvisPresley drugs from 1967 until his death in 1977. "Dr. Nick" gave Elvis his ultimately fatal supply.

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

* ''Series/FBIMostWanted'': Dr. Jason Brock, the VillainOfTheWeek in "Dopesick", is running a pill mill for [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels a biker gang]]. He writes prescriptions for opiods for the addicts the biker gang sends him as patients without even the most cursory examination: listing 'back pain' as the reason for prescription. The addicts fill the scripts, keep a percentage of the pills for their own use, and give the rest to the bikers to onsell. Aside from the huge number of prescriptions written, the FBI are tipped off because all of his 'patients' pay cash.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* A recent ''Apartment3G'' has Professor Papagoras providing fake prescriptions for insomnia pills, in exchange for (it is very loosely implied) sex.

[[folder:Film]]

* In ''Film/TheCannonballRun'', Dr. Nikolas van Helsing is the habit of injecting himself (and anyone else who asks for it) with the unspecified contents of a hypodermic he always carries, which causes him to get a blissful grin and then pass out.

--> "'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." '

* ''Series/{{House}}'': Dr. Gregory House is his own Dr. Feelgood, what with the Vicodin addiction and all. However, due to the rules against doctors writing prescriptions for themselves, he usually has Wilson or one of his minions get the goods for him. They occasionally find this is true of the patients they're treating that week; one episode had them discover a working Mom was filling a Ritalin prescription for her children without the knowledge of her family so she could take the pills herself for the buzz.
* Referenced in an episode of ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'', when a new neighbor asks Lois who her doctor is. Lois asks what the problem is, and the neighbor replies "back pain," and goes on to imply that she will say anything to get the pills she wants. Lois replies, "Sorry, my doctor's honest."

* A ''Series/NewTricks'' episode focusing on the death of a rock singer, had his former bandmates point the detectives at 'Doc' who supplied them all with drugs back in the day. The guy turned out to be just a dealer rather than an actual doctor.
* A VictimOfTheWeek on ''Series/TheGlades'' was one of these and the clinic he operated was a 'pill mill'. It turned out that the clinic was only one of a whole chain of pill mills operated by a corrupt medical company. Also, the dead doctor was doing it [[spoiler: so he could raise money for medical supplies to send to earthquake-ravaged Haiti]]
* ''Series/LawAndOrder'' had a case once involving one of these. They had a little trouble coming up with a charge that would stick because the drugs he was prescribing and supplying weren't actually illegal.
* On ''Series/MadMen'' the creative team has to work over the weekend to come up with a new campaign pitch for an important client. Everyone is very tired so Rogers suggests that they call in a doctor he knows that can give them 'vitamin shots' that will give them the energy they need to finish the project. The doctor injects everyone with what appears to be methamphetamines. Things turn weird quickly with people acting loony and some even start hurting themselves. It is implied that the doctor also supplies Roger with LSD.
* On ''Series/{{Shadowhunters}}'', Victor Aldertree, head of the Institute and a former field medic, gives Isabelle the FantasticDrug ''yin fen''. This is allegedly to help her recover from an injury, but he plays up his helpfulness in seeking a date with her. The drug is also extremely addictive, being made from vampire venom. Unable to get it from any source except for Aldertree, Isabelle ends up seeking out actual vampires to get bitten.

--> '''Doctor''': Does your face hurt, Mr. Washington?
--> '''Patient''': Yeah.
--> '''Doctor''': ''[Shoves prescription at him]'' Then this should help!

* "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.
-->''And though she's not really ill/There's a little yellow pill...''\\
''Doctor please, some more of these/Outside the door, she took four more.''

* Music/CypressHill's "Dr. Greenthumb" specializes in cultivating home-grown marijuana. His business plan seems to be more about supplying independent growers with the means to hide their operation from the police than about supplying pot directly.

* [[http://skippyslist.com/list/ "37. Our medic is called "Sgt. Larwasa", not "Dr. Feelgood"."]]
* ''WebVideo/WorldWarTwo'': The special episode "High Hitler! - Nazis on Crystal Meth Part 1" covers the history of Dr. Theodor Morell, Hitler's personal physician, who prescribed him daily cocktails of methamphetamine, cocaine, barbiturates, and more.

* Dr. Potterswheel in ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'' gives Bloberta painkillers in response to her mutilating her lower region with a jackhammer, as he's [[NightmareFetishist turned on by this.]] He's also revealed to be a widower who also gave his wife painkillers as opposed to actually treating her, which may have resulted in her death.

* SerialKiller Efren Saldivar gained notoriety for killing at least six[[note]]Some estimates list his kill count at over 200![[/note]] patients by injecting a paralytic drug which led to respiratory and/or cardiac arrest. 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 Nichopoulos ([[NamesTheSame also known as]] [[TheSimpsons Dr. Nick]]), who prescribed Elvis Presley drugs from 1967 until his death in 1977. "Dr. Nick" gave Elvis his ultimately fatal supply.

* Dr. Straus, found in the town of Novac in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is both a fairly incompetent doctor (though she can still provide treatments to you), and a seller of illegal, addictive chems like Jet and Buffout. She's the only character in the game who does both.

* 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 in on the black market.
* French SerialKiller [[http://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.

[[DiscreditedTrope They are getting quite rare nowadays]] as most medical regulating bodies are able to electronically track a physician's prescribing history and flag anything suspicious. In fact, there have been cases of doctors withholding narcotics from legitimate pain patients for fear of appearing like a Dr. Feelgood.

--> "'Well,' Doc says, 'there was a feller in here this morning. City feller. Dressed kinda flashy. So he's got him a 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 toe nails, Pop. I'm in agony."' he says.

** Terri doling out psuedophedrine when she becomes the school Nurse (despite not actually being a nurse).
* A ''Series/NewTricks'' episode focusing on the death of a rock singer, had his former band mates point the detectives at 'Doc' who supplied them all with drugs back in the day. The guy turned out to be just a dealer rather than an actual doctor.
* A VictimOfTheWeek on ''Series/TheGlades'' was one of these and the clinic he operated was a 'pill mill'. It turned out that the clinic was only one of a whole chain of pill mills operated by a corrupt medical company. Also the dead doctor was doing it [[spoiler: so he could raise money for medical supplies to send to earthquake ravaged Haiti]]

And I'm a junkie with a big King Kong sized monkey\\

* Dr. George Nichopoulos ([[NamesTheSame also known as]], [[TheSimpsons Dr. Nick]],) who prescribed Elvis Presley drugs from 1967 until his death in 1977. "Dr. Nick" gave Elvis his ultimately fatal supply.

* 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.

* ''Film/VeronikaVoss'': Dr. Katz is more evil than your standard Dr. Feelgood. Not only does she hook addicts up with their morphine, she apparently creates addicts deliberately, and then she bleeds them of everything they own, finally driving them to suicide by refusing to give them any more drugs after they run out of money.

* ''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 a 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." '

* A ''Series/NewTricks'' episode focusing on the death of a rock singer, had his former band mates point the detectives at 'Doc' who supplied them all with drugs back in the day. The guy turned out to be just a dealer rather than actual doctor.

* On ''Series/MadMen'' the creative team has to work over the weekend to come up with a new campaign pitch for a important client. Everyone is very tired so Rogers suggests that they call in a doctor he knows that can give them 'vitamin shots' that will give them the energy they need to finish the project. The doctor injects everyone with what appears to be methamphetamines. Things turn weird quickly with people acting loony and some even start hurting themselves. It is implied that the doctor also supplies Roger with LSD.

* Dr Straus, found in the town of Novac in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is both a fairly incompetent doctor (though she can still provide treatments to you), and a seller of illegal, addictive chems like Jet and Buffout. She's the only character in the game who does both.

* 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.

* French SerialKiller [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Petiot Marcel Petiot]] was a doctor who attracted 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.

* Music/PinkFloyd's "Comfortably Numb" has verses apparently sung by such a doctor (who's aiming to revive the KO'd protagonist to make him perform a show; the movie of [[Music/TheWall the album]] shows it's not that glamorous. The song was partially inspired by Music/RogerWaters' encounter of one when he fell ill on tour ):

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers''.: Dr. Venture visits a "Tijuana doctor" for a resupply of his pills. Initially the doctor balks at prescribing such a large amount of drugs, and [[StereotypeReactionGag was insulted]] that Dr. Venture assumed he'd just grant a prescription because he was a Mexican doctor. [[EveryManHasHisPrice Dr. Benjamin helped smooth the ruffles.]]

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[[folder: Comics ]]

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

[[folder: Music ]]

--> ''And though she's not really ill/There's a little yellow pill...''
--> ''Doctor please, some more of these/Outside the door, she took four more.''

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[[folder: Theater ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* [[http://skippyslist.com/list/ "37. Our medic is called "Sgt Larwasa", not "Dr. Feelgood"."]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

->''"If you're down he'll pick you up, Doctor Robert''
->''Take a drink from his special cup, Doctor Robert''
->''Doctor Robert, you're a new and better man''
->''He helps you to understand''
->''He does everything he can, Doctor Robert"''

The TropeNamer is the Music/MotleyCrue song, in which the titular doctor does many things (including making cocaine for the Mexican mob). Not to be confused with the Music/ArethaFranklin song or the British pub rock band.

* Music/MotleyCrue's song is, of course, the TropeNamer, although it's never clear if the character so nicknamed is a doctor with profitable sidelines or a simple dealer with a memorable handle.
--> ''Rat-tailed Jimmy is a second hand hood/Deals out in Hollywood\\
Got a '65 Chevy with primered flames/Traded for some powdered goods\\
Jigsaw Jimmy, he's runnin' a gang/But, I hear he's doin' okay\\
Got a cozy little job/Sells the Mexican mob/Packages of candycaine''

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers''.: Dr. Venture visits a "Tijuana doctor" for a resupply of his pills. Initially the doctor balks at prescribing such a large amount of drugs. The doctor was insulted that Dr. Venture assumed he'd just grant a prescription because he was a Mexican doctor. Dr. Benjamin helped smooth the ruffles.

* Music/{{WASP}} has "Doctor Rockter" from the ConceptAlbum ''The Crimson Idol''

* Tracey Ullman plays one [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gukrvhjUuyw in this sketch.]]

* Startlingly common in real life.
* Perhaps one of the best known cases is that of Dr. George Nichopoulos ([[NamesTheSame also known as]], [[TheSimpsons Dr. Nick]],) who prescribed Elvis Presley drugs from 1967 until his death in 1977. "Dr. Nick" gave Elvis his ultimately fatal supply.

* 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 only recently declassified
* Pretty much ''every'' doctor in UsefulNotes/NaziGermany who wasn't a MadDoctor was 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.
* This was actually 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.