I was curious how people got into neuroscience. Random happenstance? A lifelong love of gap junctions? So I asked about it on twitter and got hundreds of responses.
I did a quick analysis of about half the responses, putting them in different categories. It quickly became clear that certain themes were popping up again and again:
It doesn’t surprise me too much that a lot of people became interested in neuroscience for a special reason: they cared about learning or decision-making or free will. A lot of you are here because a particular book or lecture was so good it blew you away. I was surprised by the number of people who were accidentally exposed to neuroscience because the class they wanted to take was filled, or it was a distributional requirement at their university, or there happened to be someone next door who was doing research on it. It turns out that serendipity is a major driver of passion!
This suggests that the best way to get other people interested in neuroscience might be to just explain it to them.
Definite shout-out to the 9% of you who are here because of the drugs and 3% of you who are doing this for revenge.
neuroecology 
I don’t know what you counted my answer as, but I definitely resonate with revenge!