Anderson Spickard Jr., M.D.

Andy Spickard, Jr., M.D., (1931-2021) was an Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical School. He began his career as a resident in general internal medicine at Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins. He was appointed a clinical associate at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, National Institutes of Health, and then returned to Vanderbilt in 1962 to complete his residency training as the first Hugh J. Morgan Resident in Medicine. Spickard joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1963 and was appointed to the Chancellor’s Chair in Medicine in 2002.

Spickard was the founding director of Ambulatory Services at Vanderbilt; the Moore County Primary Care Center in Lynchburg, Tenn.; Vanderbilt Occupational Health Service; the Vanderbilt Division of General Internal Medicine; and the Vanderbilt Institute for Treatment of Addiction-VITA. He was a national and international leader in the areas of substance abuse prevention, treatment, and physician wellness. He was the national program director of the Robert Wood Johnson "Fighting Back: Community Initiatives to Reduce Demand for Illegal Drugs and Alcohol" and served in leadership roles for the Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse. In 1999, he founded the Center for Professional Health at Vanderbilt and served as its director from 1999 to 2008. He was the author, most recently, of The Craving Brain-Science, Spirituality and the Road to Recovery, coauthored with Barbara Thompson and James B. He was also the author of Dying for a Drink-What You and Your Family Should Know About Alcoholism and Stay With Me-Stories of a Black Bag Doctor. Spickard had 11 grandchildren with his wife, Sue,