Basic Trope: A doctor or other medical professional who prescribes/provides addictive or dangerous prescription drugs in an unethical manner, knowing the drugs will be abused or diverted.
- Straight:
- Dr. Bob writes any client who can pay (or whose insurance can pay) prescriptions for addictive or dangerous prescription drugs.
- Dr. Bob turns a blind eye to a patient seeking addictive or dangerous drugs who is obviously an addict or obviously does not have the disease they exist to treat.
- Dr. Bob, a psychiatrist, prescribes patients pills such as amphetamines and benzodiazipines before considering other forms of therapy for their conditions.
- Dr. Bob knowingly diverts drugs to his own possession, for later use or trade or sale.
- Exaggerated:
- Dr. Bob literally hands the pills out like candy, without even bothering with prescriptions or medical exams or anything else — he may as well be a street dealer working out of a medical office. He may not even be a real "doctor", just someone with access to the drugs in the medical setting.
- Dr. Bob's very first response when someone comes in for care is to prescribe them a cocktail of methamphetamine and morphine, because he believes speedballs cure anything.
- Everyone always parties at Dr. Bob's mansion because they know he has the best drugs in town.
- Dr. Bob opens up a "pain clinic" where any played up or imaginary ache, wound, or other pain will be prescribed with a drug of the patient's choice.
- Downplayed:
- Dr. Bob occasionally writes a questionable sleeping pill or painkiller or stimulant script for himself or someone else, but doesn't make a regular business of it.
- Dr. Bob only misuses the drugs himself, and tries to keep it somewhat of a secret.
- Dr. Bob is willing to occasionally give some prescriptions for the occasional non-medicinally necessary but useful as tools but puts his foot down at signs of actual addiction or dependence and insists upon proper treatment. His patients are to use the drugs, not have the drugs use them.
- Justified:
- The place in which Dr. Bob lives has very strict drug controls, and Dr. Bob knows that the drug, despite being addictive or dangerous in some cases, is the best treatment he can offer a patient. This can be Truth in Television in some instances, as well.note
- Dr. Bob knows the patient is an addict but believes in managed treatment or harm reduction, and would rather provide the patient with their opiates or stimulants in a way they can try to supervise and make less dangerous for the patient than street acquisition. Also can be Truth in Television, with such things as methadone or suboxone management for heroin addicts and transitioning stimulant addicts who are self-medicating ADHD or similar to set-dosage pills rather than injection.
- Dr. Bob is trying to make a point that an allegedly dangerous drug isn't as dangerous as claimed and is willing to face the consequences for doing so.
- Dr. Bob works in a "pill mill" in a jurisdiction with minimal or no prescription restrictions or transparency.
- Inverted: Dr. Bob believes Drugs Are Bad to the point of Black-and-White Insanity, and refuses to even prescribe a small dosage of painkillers to a cancer patient screaming in pain or even a laxative to a patient who hasn't had a bowel movement in a week, instead screaming at them to "toughen up".
- Subverted: Dr. Bob refuses to prescribe to an obvious drug addict who appears to be faking symptoms just to get the drugs.
- Double Subverted: The patient actually does have the illness the drug would help, and their "fake" symptoms were actually real and so overwhelming that they were Mistaken for Junkie.
- Parodied:
- Dr. Bob is a sketchy, stereotypical Back-Alley Doctor with a sign advertising all of the drugs he has available with their prices next to them.
- Anytime Dr. Bob appears, the eponymous Mötley Crüe song plays.
- Dr. Bob acts like a stereotypical drug dealing gangbanger in his doctor's office.
- Zig Zagged: Dr. Bob is actually a normal, professional doctor who would never think of doing such things... until a tragic loss of a patient, a massive malpractice suit, his practice losing patients due to Malicious Slander and bad press that he is a Deadly Doctor. Unable to sustain a legitimate practice after this, and entirely disillusioned with medicine, he becomes a Dr. Feelgood, dispensing painkillers and speed and sleeping pills as if they were candy. He sucks at being a drug dealer, and an arrest soon happens. While in prison, he has a moment of What Have I Done, undergoes rehab, and somehow on release becomes the first to petition for reinstatement of his medical license and reopens a legitimate practice in another state. Then someone finds out about the past...
- Averted: Dr. Bob is a normal, professional doctor who does not prescribe inappropriately, unless, perhaps, upholding the Hippocratic Oath
over the law demands it. - Enforced:
- In any depiction where this is Truth in Television.
- To maintain verisimilitude in some depictions of the medical profession, where diverting at least for oneself happens in Real Life.
- To show just how unethical Dr. Bob is.
- To make a statement about drug laws in one way or another.
- To show a character as an addict, whether Functional Addict or Off the Wagon.
- Lampshaded:
- "I'm going to give you a script for Desoxyn, that is what we call methamphetamine. Whatever you do, do not crush it up and inject it or snort it. Okay?"
- "Why don't you just call up your doctor, it would be easier than finding a dealer!"
- Exploited: A patient robs Dr. Bob, knowing that he would have a lot of painkillers on hand.
- Defied:
- Dr. Bob with a failing practice and deeply in debt refuses to become Dr. Feelgood, even though he knows doing so would be a way out of the problems.
- A patient refuses the over-prescribing or the drug and finds another doctor that will offer non-drug or more responsible drug treatments for their illness. Can be Truth in Television, often in the fields of pain management or psychiatry, because there are over-prescribing doctors or doctors who prescribe before other solutions/prescribe the wrong drugs in both.
- Discussed:
- "I think you have too many pills here. Are you sure you even know what you're taking them for?" "Does it matter?"
- "I know this really good doctor who will prescribe anything you want for a price." "Oh? What's his number?"
- Someone is shown with prescriptions they absolutely should not have.
- Someone mentions going to Dr. Bob to get their fix.
- Conversed:
- "Maybe we should have Dr. Bob being an addict to opiates here."
- "If this doctor did this in Real Life, he'd be arrested and sued..."
- Implied:
- Dr. Bob is shown having lost his license/become a Back-Alley Doctor due to "over-prescribing" or drug law violations.
- A line of patients is outside a shady-looking doctor's office or pain clinic or in a waiting room... all of them looking like stereotypical junkies.
- Someone rich is shown with a medicine cabinet featuring tons of pills and other medications, and to be undergoing bad side effects from them.
- A pain clinic operates out of an old bank building in the parking lot of a strip mall, and always has a long line of disheveled people waiting to get in.
- Deconstructed:
- The patients die from accidents, overdoses, and other issues related to untreated addictions to the drugs.
- The patients are suffering extreme symptoms of toxicity and side effects.
- Dr. Bob is arrested or sued or otherwise legally disciplined for engaging in such behavior.
- Reconstructed:
- As in the sometimes Truth in Television examples above, Dr. Bob is trying to do his or her best to care for patients even if the law says otherwise.
- No one really suffers bad effects even though the doctor is totally irresponsible, the user patients actually are not: they are Functional Addicts or otherwise managing their conditions themselves, using the Dr. Feelgood to maintain stable supplies and avoid risk, or they are not hardcore addicts despite the drugs being addictive — only using them for fun or temporary utility, making sure it goes no further than that.
- Dr. Bob is trying to fund his care for the poor and unable to pay or a research project or something else that takes a lot of money by being a Dr. Feelgood to the rich, in a case of being a Robin Hood and believing The End Justifies the Means.
- Played For Laughs: Dr. Bob's clients show joy from drugs that wouldn't be remotely recreationally useful or abusable, like low doses of statins.
Here's your prescriptions for amphetamines and morphine and some sleeping pills too. Now go back to Dr. Feelgood.
