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doctor shopping is not the right word. The correct word is "double dipping"...

When a doctor prescribes a large amount of a narcotic, the assumption is that the patient is using the medication as prescribed...but some people go to two or three or four doctors with the same story, and get a lot more pain medication than is needed...essentially they lie.

For example, you might need Oxycontin 40 mg BID for your severe back pain. This is a class II narcotic, so most doctors would put you on a "pain contract" before prescribing it for a non terminal disease. The pain contract says that you have to tell all your doctors you are on this contract, and let the primary doctor know if you get Lortabs from the local ER or from another doctor...If you got to a couple places, this is "double dipping".

You can get physically "addicted" to pain medication, but most people in pain stay on the same dosage for long periods...(terminally ill people may need quickly increasing dosages to control their increasing pain).

But cancer patients and accident patients whose pain is relieved with other therapy usually can be physically withdrawn off of the medication...

Addicts however use pain medicine to feel good psychologically, and stay on it...the worst cases are people with back pain who overuse narcotics to treat their psychological pain...e.g. depression, low self esteem...

As for Rush, someone might want to look up Betty Ford, who was double dipping and getting her narcs from several doctors, but never went jail---unlike Rush, she "blamed" her doctors for her addiction, even though she was lying thru her teeth to get her narcs...

re: unlike Rush, she "blamed" her doctors for her addiction)))

I've detected a bit of the blame game coming from Rush's corner...I wonder if there'll be more.

Limbaugh's drug that we know of from March to September.

Liz Taylor blamed her Doctors for her addictions as well, as did Jerry Lewis, Elvis Presley.....

My husband practices medicine in CA, where several of the prescribed drugs are written on triplicate forms, with one copy going directly to the DEA.