Year: 2002
Type: article
Abstract: In this occasional series we record the views and personal experience of people who have specially contributed to the evolution of ideas in the Journal's field of interest.After 15 years as director of an alcohol treatment program in New York City, Enoch Gordis was appointed director of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in 1986.He has met that responsibility with outstanding success. STARTING OFF IN MEDICINE-AND MUSICA: What I would like to do today is talk with you about your career and achieve an understanding of what has contributed to it-the influences on your personal career path.EG: I think there were influences on my choosing medicine as a career.Although there were no doctors in my immediate family, medicine was a highly respected profession.But as far as getting into the alcoholism world, there really were no family influences.There was no alcoholism that I knew of in my immediate family or in close relatives.I was raised in a fairly observant Jewish family.My father was a distinguished rabbi.Although the prevalence of alcoholism in Jews is said to be low, it is probably higher than people think.Nevertheless, it was a topic remote from the Jewish culture in which I grew up.I am not the only person with this kind of a background who ended up in the alcoholism world.There are distinguished clinicians in the United States and the United Kingdom with a similar background.But had you asked me in medical school whether I would be entering into this world, the answer would have been, 'I don't know what you're talking about'.A: You went to Columbia University and you are from New York originally.EG: New York City born and bred.A: When you entered college, what were you planning to do at that time?EG: I began, I believe-this is going back a while-as a pre-engineering student, but by the second year, I had changed my mind to premed and from then
Source: Addiction
Author: Enoch Gordis
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2397304668