Addicted doctors

House [Dr. Greg House of tv series “House M.D.” - played by Hugh Laurie] began taking pills for chronic pain after developing an infarction in his right leg...

But while the drug habit was treated merely as a character quirk until now, it’s about to become a full-on vice.

“House is an addict, and we wanted to deal with that in an honest way,” [series creator David] Shore says. “We’re very aware that this is a real problem. Rates of addiction among doctors are higher than in the population at large, and we couldn’t keep playing this for fun.”

[From House Beautiful, by David Hochman, TV Guide, Oct 30-Nov 5, 2006]
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“It is known that doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, who come into regular contact with drugs in work situations, have rates of opiate and other addictions many times greater than other professionals. They tend also to have better recovery rates than street addicts.”

From article: An Availability-Proneness Theory of Illicit Drug Abuse, by The National Institute on Drug Abuse

Related section: Drugs / alcohol
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