How do I get involved with this?

Question

I would like to volunteer with victims of addictions, because I want to learn about them, but I don't want to make this a central focus career.

Whenever I say this people think I want to "get into their heads", "find out what makes them tick", etc. and tell me "Go down to the homeless shelter or the rehab, you'll find plenty of playing cards". Don't get me wrong, I am NOT looking to milk anyone for mental jackpot here, not in the least...and neither am I looking to be their free counsellour either.

What I AM trying to do, is get into what's behind what makes one person so addicted to something and the next guy able to leave it alone easily, just to understand it more(like a field study of the addictive personality), while also doing some good in the world. Eventually I'd like to put it all together and write it out what I find/think, but I dono if anyone's going to want to read it, so it may be published, it may be a journal, I dono. Either way...

How do I get into doing this?

Answer 1

This has already been explored, and we already have the answers. Thus, you can just do some research without doing a field study and know how it works.