Rather than change my career to Electrical Engineering I chose instead to work with adolescents. As I took a preventative stance to some very serious mental disorders I moved down one notch. If we get people help at a younger age, we may be able to prevent some very serious disorders in adulthood. Made sense to me, so off I went to find adolescents in pain. Alcohol and substance abuse issues have always been a priority of mine due to personal issues with this disorder.
Drug abuse is an epidemic among our young people here in the United States.
As a society we have largely ignored this group of kids hoping that they'll turn their lives around as they mature. In my humble opinion, this is a big mistake in our overall thinking. The very high positive correlation between substance abuse and domestic violence, child abuse and our ever-growing prison population cannot be ignored. My efforts at prevention included working with violent juvenile offenders. These kids were the by-products of very dysfunctional families.