Elvis Presley’s physician, close friend

MEMPHIS — Dr. George Nichopoulos, Elvis Presley’s personal physician in the decade before his death in 1977, who lost his medical license for overprescribing addictive drugs for years to numerous patients, died Wednesday in Memphis. He was 88.

Memorial Park Funeral Home in Memphis announced his death in a post on its website.

Nichopoulos was the doctor on call at a medical center in Memphis in 1967 when he was summoned to treat Presley at his home, Graceland.

Doctor and patient struck up a rapport, and for the next few years, whenever Presley flew in from Hollywood, Nichopoulos treated him for a variety of complaints, most related to insomnia and rheumatic pain.

After Presley returned to Memphis permanently in 1970, Nichopoulos became his primary physician. “I was one of his closest friends,” he told investigative The Daily Beast in 2009. “At times I was his father, his best friend, his doctor. Whatever role I needed to play at the time, I did.”

Presley was found slumped over in a bathroom in Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977, dead at 42 from a coronary arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat. A toxicology showed “significant” levels of codeine, quaaludes and other medications.

In 1980, Nichopoulos was indicted on 14 counts of overprescribing stimulants, depressants and painkillers for Presley and several other patients.

Nichopoulos was acquitted of all charges, but in 1995 the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners permanently suspended his medical license, stating that he had been overprescribing to numerous patients for years.

In his memoir, Nichopoulos offered a long list of Presley’s medical problems, including mild diabetes, migraine headaches, insomnia and allergies.

“To my knowledge the amount of prescription medications Elvis took had nothing to do with his death,” he told the website Elvis Information Network in 2010.