my life as a chemical reaction

Old tree lined streets, the side streets still with some single family homes, but the broader avenues just one apartment complex after the other.....say 100 units, so 100 stressed out little families, trying damned hard to live the American dream.....but unemployment is high....maybe there are actually two families in the apartment.....maybe grandma stays with the kids while the young parents flip burgers or pour coffee.....kids run wild in the apartment playgrounds, and in the streets and parks.....the kids start to drive the hard working young moms and dads nuts....they drive the teachers nuts in the overcrowded schools.....the social workers say maybe the hyperactive youngsters could be helped by behavior modifying medications.....drugs.....chemicals.....not street drugs, but things approved by the government health services, things that make a profit for the big health industry companies.....your family doctor, or your local clinic....they get financial inducements to go along with this scheme of things....so I had meds to take when I was four years old.....in the morning, and in the evening.....some kids had different meds, and it was a trip to trade them around and see what happened.....school breakfast, school lunch, dinner out of the microwave while granny watched television.....mom and dad almost always at work, or desperate in the bars.....twenty-first century joy.....by high-school, the government meds had multiplied, and were mixed daily with weird chems cooked by skinny ugly guys who knew your older sister.....and when you got out of school and went into the Forces, then they really started pumping you full of shit....my life as a chemical reaction.....