George Woody graduated from Amherst College in (1960), received his M.D. from Temple (1964), interned at Bryn Mawr Hospital (1964-1965), was a general medical officer in the Navy (1965-1967), and was a resident in Psychiatry at Temple University Hospital (1967-1970). He worked at a community mental health center in Philadelphia (1970-1972), and in 1971 began work at the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center‘s (VAMC) Drug Dependence Treatment Unit, where he treated several thousand patients with substance use disorders over approximately 30 years.