Let me preface this by saying that Life is beautiful! There are things in life that we prefer and there are things in life that we could go without. There are places in life that we would love to find ourselves in and there are situations we find ourselves that we absolutely DO NOT like. We find ourselves in downward spirals as we are going perpetually up. The streets we decide to travel and go down are going to have turbulence that we wouldn't ever consider, but there's a reward worth obtaining once we endure that turbulence. Once we've travelled far enough down the street, we can sometimes turn around and realize that we were not the same person we were when we started going down those streets. For some, this is something we already know was going to happen. For others, we were absolutely flabbergasted at the contrast of the people we were at the beginning of the street verses the people we become down that particular street. Either way, somewhere along the way, we found something absolutely CRAZY about our journey and the transformations of it. Take for instance going to school. For those that want to go to school and are looking forward to the experience, they may have a pretense and notion about what their school journey is going to be like. Whether elementary school, high school, college, university or otherwise; future students may have an idea of what the life avenue of their school is going to be like. They have an idea of what their social within school is going to be like. They have an idea of some of the classes they may be taking or the educators that may be teaching them. They may have an idea of kind of curriculum or electives they may take and/or major in. And they most definitely will have an idea of what the end of the school experience is going to be like and what their life will look like once they've "mastered" the avenue of 'school' in their life. But somewhere down the line, students are going to look back and realize one of two things (if not both): they've done and been through some pretty crazy things in their lives and they've had to become some rather crazy ass people (pardon the french, but it's just the best way for me to get this point across 😅😅😅). Moreover, students have probably never thought that they would ever become certain types of people because their sense of being that person to them was crazy.

Last night I was chatting with the group down the street. One young man, who is 30, mentioned his medications. He has recently developed a volatile and unpredictable temper and poor impulse control. He showed me the list of meds he took and I was stunned. They have him taking Gabapentin 3 times per day. Gabapentin is for seizures and neuropathy, neither of which he has. It is now way over prescribed for all kinds of things. In 2014, Pfizer was taken to court in a class action suit over that drug. It cause permanent cognitive decline, and triggered early onset dementia in others. In a shocking move, Pfizer plead guilty and happily paid the billion dollar fine. This prevented any evidence from being made public and they have continued to sell it by the ton. I explained all this to the young man and he intends to cut back and then quit the drug. This will solve many of his problems. Over the years I have warned and gotten several people off of that stuff. It is interesting to note, that many of the people with early onset dementia in that class action suit were in their 30's and 40's. I count that conversation last night as a big win!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8t3Oe1e7Ok