Doctors doing drugs and drinking: some physicians with substance abuse problems are protected by family and friends

Physician Executive, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Monique Fields

By that time, Dr. Kevin had failed and succeeded in treatment. He had friends who knew how to help him. He turned to them, and one let him get sober at his home. That friend also gave Dr. Kevin an ultimatum--tell an administrator at the hospital about his drug abuse. Dr. Kevin obliged, turning himself in one day in December 1992.

"If I hadn't turned myself in," says Dr. Kevin, "I don't think I would be alive today."

Dr. Kevin, 47, survived, but his career didn't. His license was suspended for four years and he never returned to a pharmacy. Today, he is a courier, traveling the globe as he helps transports equipment. He has been sober for nearly 12 years.

Dr. Kevin's addiction could have taken a blow much sooner. His enablers were his family, his colleagues. No one stepped up and confronted him. They feared for his life and said nothing.

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'Quiet' addiction

There are more like him, more doctors who exhibited the tell-tale signs of abuse.

But for reasons that astound some professionals, doctors are often allowed to quietly consign themselves to addiction.

Like Dr. Kevin, Dr. Bob took his first sip of beer at age 16. When he took his last drink, some 44 years had passed. He didn't lose his job or his family, but he severely limited his achievement in medicine.

In the end, he drank every day, getting drunk on the weekends. What he got in return was a pair of shaky hands, tremors so powerful he couldn't control them. Dr. Bob, too embarrassed for colleagues to see his hand tremors, took himself out of the operating room. He even applied for and received administrative duties, casting aside years of medical training as an obstetrician/gynecologist so that he could continue to drink.

He compensated for his drinking in any way that he could. His memory lapses, for example, were so profound he wrote notes to himself, particularly at night.

"In all those years, I never saw a patient (while I was) drunk," Dr. Bob says. "I was never in the operating room drunk. But I was certainly hung over seeing patients." When confronted by family or colleagues, he was embarrassed, professed his guilt, promised to cut back. And he did, if only for a short time.

But soon the cravings would return, and Dr. Bob turned to the bottles he had hidden everywhere. He had bottles stashed in his car, in his briefcase, in all corners of the house. He drank on the way to work. He had a glass of wine with dinner. His wife went to bed and he stayed up to drink.

"It was so gradual and so insidious," says Dr. Bob, now in retirement. "My motivation was suffering. I was becoming more and more isolated."

He was passed over for a promotion, in part, because of his drinking. He left a job where he was an administrator for an HMO and went to work for a California county health department, again severely limiting his growth as a medical professional.

There, he was in a meeting one morning when a colleague smelled alcohol on his breath. The colleague suggested he seek treatment, but stopped short of reporting him to the medical board, primarily because he wasn't seeing patients at the time. He knew he had a problem, but he didn't want to seek treatment too soon. He didn't want to quit. He also was scared treatment wouldn't work. If the treatment failed, he knew there was nowhere to turn. So, he didn't go. But the idea has been planted in his head.