Okay, let's talk about drugs. I'm not talking about the drugs you might find on the street that are manufactured to make you high – that are also illegal. I'm talking about the drugs that are necessary to keep you healthy and perhaps, even alive. I'm also talking about the medications that are needed to help ease whatever pain affects your body. Many of these medications are so expensive that many people can't afford them. They find themselves in a difficult situation. Do you purchase your medication? Buy groceries? Pay your bills? What do you do? Last year, to control my diabetes, I was on three different diabetic medications: Metformin, Farxiga, and Janumet. While Metformin was reasonably priced, the total of all three medications cost $505.00 a month. That's right You read that correctly. FIVE-HUNDRED-FIVE dollars EACH month! Oh, and that is WITH my insurance. I can't even imagine what it would cost if my insurance hadn't paid the bulk of this astronomical cost. And yet, there are others that don't have the same insurance we have. Can you imagine trying to buy your meds and pay the rent? Especially if you're like me and your Social Security benefits are less than $1000.00 each month. Heck, with that little SS coming in, I couldn't even afford an apartment, let alone rent AND meds. The point I'm trying to make is the fact that most medications cost about 50 cents to manufacture. Of course, that doesn't figure in the cost of maintaining the equipment, the salaries for the line workers, or the scientists. What bothers me is the pay the corporate executives give themselves. Why are they making millions, if not billions of dollars every year. Most of the worker-bees might make approximately $1500 a week – if they're lucky, while the CEOs are making approximately $28MILLION each year. Doesn't seem fair, does it? At one time, I thought the CEOs of the big pharma companies made about $300-500K a year. Then, I decided to be a bit more accurate and look it up. You could have knocked me over with a feather! Not $2M a year but $28M a year! That's just not right! And to think they are walking home with a clear conscience knowing they aren't doing all that much to actually earn that kind of salary while their little peons are probably struggling to pay their bills. I sincerely doubt that they're even bothered by the fact that us little guys, especially the ones on Social Security are struggling even harder. I guess I just get frustrated when I see my medical bills constantly rising while my Medicare payments don't increase as rapidly. It's mind boggling to think they expect anyone to pay for the cost of these drugs and have a decent living. Maybe someday, someone might figure this out. But until then, the drug companies have us over a barrel and that barrel is wobbling, overflowing with water, and getting bigger by the day. There are also the age-related illnesses that require medical attention. Some are high blood pressure, stenosis, osteoarthritis, and a host of others that are just related to getting old. Hell, maybe the answer is Soilent Green. If you've never seen that movie, see if you can find it on HBO or maybe Netflix or perhaps one of your cable stations. I'm not saying I'm a fan of Soilent Greet but maybe when you think about the high cost of drugs, this is the direction the world is headed.

Baton Rouge rapper NBA Youngboy is currently being investigated by federal agent's following his previous arrest. The rapper was previously released on bail after officers found several guns, thousands in cash, and even drug's at his music video shoot. It has been said that the item's collected at his video shoot did not belong to him.

It started the day my little sister was born, December 1st, 2008. I heard my mother in the other room screaming for my stepfather to race her to the hospital. I still don't remember all of the events that occurred that night. Until the next morning when I held that beautiful, tiny miracle in my arms. She shouldn't have survived. She was born two weeks early and only weighed three pounds. After we took her home, my mother had to stay at the hospital, the stress of labor outdid her. They diagnosed her with a disease called, Lupus. it was extremely painful and her doctor had to prescribe many types of medications just to keep the pain bearable. After a while my mother started to abuse her medications, she would take twice the amount she needed to, causing her to always be tired and angry. She would scream and yell at everything we would do. Eventually, she got my grandma hooked on them also. It was a hard period of time. Me being the older sister but not knowing a damn thing about life. I had to raise that little miracle and keep her from the experiences that completely changed me as a person. Because she was abusing her medications, my mother would have excruciating seizures. Leaving me to deal with outcomes. There was a time it was so bad I had to hold her tongue to keep her from choking. Two years later CPS came to the door to ask me some questions about my occurrences at home. I explained, being too young to understand what their intentions would be. I told them that my mother would show me how to crush pills and sniff them. I told them about her seizures and weird conversations I'd have with her while she was high. How she would leave her door locked and I'd only be able to come in if there was an emergency. How I at nine years old, was raising and feeding my baby sister who was two years old at this time. They wrote everything down on their computers and left to make some arrangments. To my surprise, they took me and my baby sister to my father and gave him temporary custody. Although it was better, I hated living with my dad. I was trapped. Not even able to walk outside unless I went to school. While I was with my dad, my grandma had passed away. Overdose. If she did it on purpose? I still don't know til' this day. But she will always be my best friend. Even though she was high most of the time too, she let me be around and talk to her about the problems happening at school. She let me cook with her, she braided my hair, and she let me cry on her shoulder as my mother should of. So losing her was losing myself. I didn't know who I was without her. I started acting out at school. Because my dad was an alcoholic at this time he was also always angry. He would take out his hard days at work on me, and when I was in trouble he'd called me horrible names. Bitch, Pussy, Mistake. It depended on the day. Even though it was better, I still missed my mom. No matter what she did I had always loved her and begged God to bring me back home. Finally, my mom was able to have visitations with us. I remember her long blonde hair and the intense smell of cigarettes and perfume. I hugged her with all my might. Hoping she'd feel my love since I couldn't express it into words. I didn't talk for years after my nana's death. After about a year of visits, my mother was able to see me outside of the building and I started being able to go back and forth between her and father on different days. But this is when the worst of the worst started. The beginning of my horror show of a childhood. We moved into a town-house with my little sister and my stepfather. This is around the time my mother started to use Heroin and Meth. I decided to ignore it and if anyone asked I had no idea what they were talking about. Those were the good years. That's when I started learning the basic feelings of life. Love, Hope, and Sadness. Until it got to be too much. My mother and stepfather started to fight every day. He began to hit her. I had watched my stepfather repeatedly sock my mother in the face. And it came to the day where I had to protect her or I would have lost her. She tried to jump out the window when I had seen the life leave from his eyes after I'd hit him in the head with an ashtray. She couldn't believe the fact I had taken her husband from her. She was going to end her life after I'd just saved it. I rushed to pull her from the ledge. Luckily I had saved her once again. After the death of my stepfather, there were a lot of questions and fear of having to go to prison for the majority of my life. But my mother finally wrapped her head around the situation and told them everything. From the drugs to the death of her spouse. And they let me continue my journey. Thank you for listening.

My mother and father were married when I was born, 16 years ago today. He wasn't as good of a father as I thought he was. My father was heavily on drugs and nobody could do anything to stop it. When my parents divorced, he was homeless and doing drugs. My mother would tell me that he was "sick" all of the time, but I didn't know what she meant. I asked for him and I wanted to see him. I couldn't understand why he didn't show up for my birthday and on Christmas. He didn't come to any school event. Every time I'd seen my father, he was standing in front of the store begging for change. He'd see me with my mom at the age of 7 and cry. With him having bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, you'd think he'd take his medicine, but he didn't. It worried me to death everyday that my Dad could die, being out in the streets on drugs. As I'd gotten older, over time it dawned on me that he wasn't going to come and see me like he'd always promised he would. He was somewhere getting high and that was all he'd cared about. He didn't care about me or how I was doing. My mother bought me nothing, no new clothes and I didn't get anything from him. I remember crying every night, wishing I could see my dad. I'd wished he was there to listen and take me to father-daughter dances, the movies, be there when I'd made it to the spelling bee. He was never there. I was on that stage, during the spelling bee, hoping that he would walk in and sit down. For my 13th birthday, he'd gave my mom a bag of clothes to give to me. When I'd looked in the bag, I was happy. But the moment I'd pulled out the item of clothing, a was so terribly disappointed. The bag was full of old people clothing, over-sized and the awful fabric. My mother's friends made jokes out of what he'd found to give me. I sat in the car with my face in my palms and cried. He humiliated me, not in front of my friends, but in front of my mother's friends. I felt so useless in that moment. My sister's dad would buy her everything and anything that she wanted, but I was the one left with nothing. I had no clothing, no shoes, and I'd gotten bullied in school for it. I would sit and watch my sister smile and be happy on her birthday, she'd had so many gifts. My mom often tried not to tell me what was really going on, but one day she'd let it all out. She told me my father was doing crack and he wasn't even paying child support. I didn't see him for a year. He'd called the house from a number that we didn't recognize and I couldn't believe it was him. He'd taken me to get an outfit and I went right back home. That day I was happy to see him and at night, I prayed that i'd get to see him again. The year of 2017, my 15th birthday, my Grandma took me and my father to the mall. He'd told me I could pick out any pair of shoes that I wanted. I was only originally supposed to get a pair of shoes but I'd gotten a outfit, too. My mother had went partying on my birthday that year and I'd gotten nothing because she was mad at me. By December, I'd seen my dad again and he was clean. He'd been to a rehabilitation center and he'd gotten clean. He promised me that when he got on his feet, he'd get me the things I needed. That time hasn't yet come and I'm not worried about it anymore. Even though my father is clean, he's living with my grandmother. He never calls to check up on me and when we do talk he often just sits in silence on the phone. Whenever I tell him I need anything, he always tells me he doesn't have the money. I don't believe him, but I do love him and at the end of the day, he is my father.