I am a 27 CoA and I have had a lot of career confusion in my life. I feel drawn to caring careers and have considered nursing, med school, etc. I currently volunteer with an advocacy organization for children who come from house holds with parental substance abuse. I have done my own recovery work and continue to do it daily. I am interested in focusing my career on kids who grew up like me, but I am still very confused/overwhelmed on the various paths. I read many of the papers on the CDC/Kaiser ACES study and that has made me consider med school, but I'm not 100% sure if that's the path for me either. I want to help older children/young adults realize the impact that parental substance abuse has on our lives and help them in recovery. I do believe a large part of that involves staying healthy. Is there anyone on here who works in this area who could talk more about what they do?
working in addiction as a child of an alcoholic?
- Thread starter agirl113
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Definitely a noble goal, just be aware that working with a population that you are a part of can actually be tricky (higher burnout when you feel like you aren't actually helping, assuming that you know how patients feel/think, frustration if they don't react as you do, etc). I'll let other SDNers give input on the substance use specifics because that is not my specialty.
Yes thank you. It's definitely a concern! right now the group I volunteer with is all advocacy, so not much one on one/patient interaction. I'm trying to do that now, but with COVID-19, I can't do anything in a hospital (before the pandemic, I went through volunteer orientation).
