For over 20 years, I worked as a family therapist to help people struggling with alcohol. I realized that the focus was almost always placed on the individual: finding strength within, taking responsibility for their own drinking, changing their behavior. But as I looked at the bigger picture, I recognized that the problem was not just within the individual, but within the structures that surround us all – the culture, the social pressures, the politics, and the alcohol industry itself. There were so many forces pushing people toward dependency, yet in my profession we were never allowed to discuss that. All the responsibility was placed on the individual, as if society itself were blameless. This became especially clear to me when I began teaching social work at a Swedish University. I realized that my first day on the job looked exactly the same as my last: the same life stories, the same dead ends, the same problems that never changed. Nothing was happening on a structural level. It struck me that the entire system of social services was built on placing blame on the individual, instead of working preventatively before addiction or dependency developed. When I stood there as an educator, looking at young students preparing to walk the same path, I reflected on my own work. That’s where the seed was planted, the idea that I wanted to contribute to change on a larger scale. The power lies in working preventatively and structurally, as we can’t always help once the damage is done, but we can create a new culture where fewer people even have to end up there in the first place.