EndGame - thank you. I don't do much classroom teaching but I do work with students to supervise their research projects and really enjoy that. I would be interested in more formal teaching though and I feel that's something I should definitely explore at some point.
"I did all this work while I was sober, and it was no accident that I chose this work. (Or is it the other way around?)"
That's a good question also for me. Research biology is what I've always been doing since graduating from college but I have not always been in neuroscience. Moved into this field ~5 years ago, it's a long and complex story and of course absolutely no accident for me either (in more ways than simply the addiction issue). I actually turned my whole life around pretty massively after being through a couple years of quite deep existential crisis and this professional shift was major part of that. I felt very strongly that I was "meant to" be in this field (for a few reasons) and when I made the move, discovered so many more layers of how it was a perfect fit for me. Sadly, unlike you, I was drinking through it until January this year. I never drank when I worked, but did all of it hangover with the constant guilt and shame over the cognitive dissonance about what I was working on and what I was. Of course the productivity suffered... but in the last couple years of my drinking my work was pretty much the only thing I cared about, my only lifeline. I wrote about how my main motivation to get sober in the end was related to my job on other threads - I could no longer bear the horror of how I was abusing what I originally thought the best chance in my life. And caused difficulties to others that were working with me. Now in recovery I actually feel I need to work on getting less attached to my profession, because I don't think such a level of self-identification with a role is psychologically healthy.
Krete - I think bioinformatics by itself is probably really not that exciting, it's just a bunch of tools, although I know computer scientists who enjoy developing the tools. I think what can make it more interesting is the actual research project, the scientific question one is studying, eg. you could be analyzing data from an addiction-related project and generate answers, make discoveries in collaboration with your colleagues.
Good luck with completing your degree and the job hunt!