Due to the unique stresses of a medical career (long hours, family pressures, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, exposure to diseases, lack of exercise) plus the easy access to pure drugs, many doctors are drug abusers. Doctors generally tend to ignore their own illnesses and when found out, there is not any specific counselling service or treatment available to them.
The AMA estimated, in 1984, that at least 4,000 of the 500,000 doctors in the USA were addicted to drugs, opium and cocaine being the favourites. It also reported that the addiction rate for doctors in the USA is 30-100 times higher than in the general population.