Community Munchausen's by Internet (Malingerers, Munchies, Spoonies, etc) - Feigning Illnesses for Attention

[The former Jack Donaghy]

Oh god I didn't think the opiate addiction problem in the US was at national level. Almost every American has used opiates and most are addicted to opiates. Holy fuck.

What are you talking about

 

[TheBigZee]

About opiates for @lolcow yoghurt and others not from the USA:

Spoiler

Most Americans have been prescribed opiates. Because of junk science, pharma, and for proift health care many Americans became dependent on opiates to cope with chronic pain. Diversion from medical sources got people hooked and created a massive market for illegal opiates. That massive market means it's very easy to obtain illegal opiates, which exposes people vulnerable to addiction who wouldn't have before. Unregulated opiates means questionable potency, which means lots of overdoses.

It is a national problem, with no clear near term out. This happened in the 1800s, and it took decades for the medical patients who were dependent/hooked to die before it was politically possible to greatly restrict medical access. About 2% of americans are dependent for pain, and another 1% or so have OUD.

From personal experience being prescribed and tapering off several times - I'm not convinced there's as big a difference between dependence and addiction as people claim.

About 3% of the population is dependent on opiates whether they are legitimately prescribed or black market. It's a massive national public health issue.

 

[Pedophobe]

It's definitely fallen out of favour, I think it's been replaced with MCAS

Oprah and Dr. Oz were proponents back in the day, making it a very high-profile fake disease.

 

[Sperghetti]

A little off topic, but can someone give me the skinny on ““”Chronic Lyme”””?
Why is it so popular with munchies and drug addicts, and why do the Lyme munchies always seem to have five hundred other things that they say is wrong with them?
I’m not going to PL and explain my deep hatred of munchies, but what is it about Lyme in particular that they love so much?

Lyme typically causes very general, flu-like symptoms like achiness, joint swelling/stiffness, fatigue, headache, etc. Munchies love stuff like that where the symptoms are mostly feeling run-down and crappy, I think because it lets them avoid doing things they don’t want to while not really impeding them too much. (See also: Covid and “long covid”.)

Because of the social nature of internet munchies, they also tend to like to claim whatever diagnosis is newly trendy at the moment, eventually accumulating them like a hoarder accumulates old boxes and cats.

 

[Flaming_Barghast]

A little off topic, but can someone give me the skinny on ““”Chronic Lyme”””?
Why is it so popular with munchies and drug addicts, and why do the Lyme munchies always seem to have five hundred other things that they say is wrong with them?
I’m not going to PL and explain my deep hatred of munchies, but what is it about Lyme in particular that they love so much?

It's a retarded misconception I believe. There's a disease that is only passed down from deer ticks, which can essentially make you allergic to meat for the rest of your life if you get it. Another disease you can get from deer ticks is lyme disease, so they probably associate the "lifelong illness" as what was originally a lifelong allergy. You'd be surprised how often I've heard people who didn't know what they were talking about mention something similar.
The funniest one I heard was someone being scared of getting the plague from a tick, while others mention not wanting prion disease from them.

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

A little off topic, but can someone give me the skinny on ““”Chronic Lyme”””?

It's complete bullshit. Antibiotics cure it.

 

[Karl Hungus]

It's complete bullshit. Antibiotics cure it.

Spoiler: Lyme sperging/story

Knew a guy who contracted honest to god Lyme disease hiking on a semi-wooded trail with his dog. The factor that complicated things for him was that he was a type 1 diabetic, which… to be fair any major infection can be a complication for type 1s because their immune systems are already whacked out from fighting their own bodies. They just threw IV Rocephin at him in the hospital, it was touch and go for a while but he finally pulled through it and the last I saw him he had no real leftover effects once he’d gotten through it. If that dude, who was already compromised, made a full recovery, most people can.

Yeah, “chronic Lyme” isn’t a thing.

 

[Nonny]

Where things get fuzzy with Lyme for me is the distinction between “chronic Lyme” and post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome. Chronic Lyme is clear nonsense: an active infection that can evade detection by somehow hiding in your body somewhere, and requires years of expensive cash-only antibiotics and somehow never gets better. But some people genuinely do seem to have symptoms even after the active infection is gone, and actual doctors are studying those people. There’s no clear cause yet, so it gets the name post treatment Lyme disease syndrome.

Many kinds of infections appear to have lingering symptoms, predating long covid too, so it seems plausible that this is just a thing that happens to some unlucky people. But I’m sure there’s also a ton of depressed malingerers hanging on to the label. Who knows how to tell the difference though, or if there even is one.

It’s these kinds of muddy clusters of maybe-sick-maybe-depressed people who first got me into munchies. Especially the ones that are clearly just a more modern-sounding version of “hysteria.” Something is causing a lot of people to feel real distress, even if the ultimate cause is a severe mental illness, and I hope I live to see a coherent scientific picture of this whole phenomena. “Lol crazy bpd bitches” is closer to the truth than “chronic Lyme,” but it’s still doesn’t seem to explain everything.

 

[The Skeksis Emperor]

A 28-year old Dutch woman Lauren is making the rounds in the news for her death by euthanasia. Daily Fail article.
I'm not a medkiwi but looking around her socials it seems likely that she munched herself to death. One doctor diagnosed her with somatic symptom disorder (see below) but she wasn't having that.

She claimed to have ME, ARFID, autism and ADHD and more. She leaned very heavily into the munchie aesthetic, pics related. She had an insta for her service dog. (very cute dog). And herself. And a blog called Brainfog because ME.

From her blog: Link.

My name is Lauren and I am 27 years old at the time of writing this. I have autism, ADHD, ARFID, depression, an anxiety disorder, a history of complex trauma, and since the fall of 2019, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) with orthostatic intolerance. Save them all or something. I would also have preferred to see it differently.

One doctor diagnosed her with munching, and it made her upset: Link.

She then said, “if these complaints cause major limitations in people's lives, then that is a somatic symptom disorder.” Oh, now I suddenly have a disorder? You can still add them, save them all, why not?!

I didn't know the disorder yet, and that simple sentence is all she explained to me about it at the time. When I later read the report, there was suddenly a more extensive definition of a somatic symptom disorder, one that does indeed involve a value judgment. Did she just not dare to say this to my face (I know, I'm very intimidating), or did she not know exactly what the criteria for this diagnosis were? Whatever it is, neither is okay.

The DSM-5 criteria for somatic symptom disorder (300.82) include:

“excessive thoughts, feelings or behaviors associated with the physical complaints”
“disproportionate and persistent thoughts about the severity of the complaints”
“persistently high level of health anxiety”
“spending an excessive amount of time and energy on these complaints or on health concerns”

In Jip and Janneke language: according to the DSM-5, if you have a somatic symptom disorder (SSD), you are too preoccupied with your physical complaints. You can read the full criteria here.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with this new label that is now being placed on me. I think it is quite something to say about someone who is seriously chronically ill, someone you have only spoken to for a short time and have already described as someone who is apparently not dealing with her illness well. Tell me, how would you do it differently? When is it still a 'normal' way of dealing with illness, and when does it become a disorder?

Her writing in Dutch is always very dramatic.

For as long as I can remember, life has been a struggle for me. Due to my many limitations (including autism, ADHD, ME) I always get stuck in life, one way or another. I have always pulled myself together and if one dream failed, another soon took its place. Luckily I never stopped dreaming.

And now she's dead, and her death will be used to argue against euthanasia, as usual. Just sucks all around.

 

[Zemblan Physics]

Reminds me of Jennyfer Hatch in Canada. She was an EDS patient who chose MAID because she wasn’t allowed to mainline unlimited government-funded opiates.

Here’s an article from after her death.

 

[Pho Real]

Both of these euthanasia cases are horrifying; neither one had fatal illnesses, and that’s if they were even sick to begin with. And that’s a big if, so many munchie red flags with both the CFS woman and the EDS one. CFS and ME, afaik, aren’t even proven to be real illnesses. Young adults shouldn’t be offered government-assisted suicide imo. Though to be fair both women sounded like utterly useless drains on their families and society in general, so I’m not totally against it in these cases. Chances were that both would’ve offed themselves either intentionally or via overdose at one point or another (or from the effects of munching like Jaquie) so might as well just get it over with.

 

[The Skeksis Emperor]

Young adults shouldn’t be offered government-assisted suicide imo.

That is still pretty difficult to achieve in The Netherlands. Lauren had to munch and lobby her little heart out for a long time, with many appointments and several teams of doctors and psychiatrists - she talks about it on her blog., and from the conversations she cites she is highly manipulative and just plain rude. Several people told her that her issues were psychological and perhaps treatable, but she kept manipulating and pushing and eventually they just gave up, I guess.

The doctors also gave a waiting time for euthanasia of one year in November 2023, but apparently she was able to force that down to only two months. Which probably should not have been allowed.

But wait, there is more! Lauren had a little brother who sadly died of bone cancer. The year after, Lauren's issues emerged. Interesting.
Terrible for the mother to lose two children though, that poor woman.

From the blog;

My son (15) suddenly became ill in 2008 and turned out to have bone cancer with metastases. No more saving. Never really had time to mourn, because the next thing was already happening. Lauren's complaints became more and more apparent. It wasn't until she was 21 that she was diagnosed with autism.
Now, 15 years later, it's happening again... my daughter, my dearest daughter, has had ME for a number of years and, in addition to her autism and ADHD, that is the final straw for her.

 

[Tell_No_Lahs]

It is the same with autism. The rise in young women (it is less teenagers and more early twenties, at least where I live) who show up for an autism diagnosis is eye-catching.
The people cited in the article were nice enough to really emphasize the suggestibility. There is a lot more "faking for clout"-talk behind closed doors.

I know this was a joke, but people are actually trying to establish the term "Neuroqueer". Even though they can't even agree on what that means.

 

[Free the Pedos]

Also call me callous but get the fuck over yourself. A service dog that helps you with your anxiety? Get some cbt and suck it the fuck up. Anxiety is something that pretty much everyone deals with in some way or another and it's sink or swim. Completely counter intuitive to rely on another living breathing being to "manage" it. You might as well bring your mum or your boyfriend to job interviews. It's about the same level of pathetic.

I've met veterans and autismos with trained, certified anxiety therapy dogs who behaved perfectly (the humans and the dogs). IMO that's fine. The dog just sits quietly by the human's side unless it's needed. It's not strapped to the human's chest like a cluster B phylactery, yipping and biting everyone.

These were also people with recorded histories of real medical conditions who were trying to interact with the world in meaningful ways. I don't think that Ask A Manager munchie really intended to get the job, or she would've, you know, prepared for the interview. She just wanted an excuse to throw her hands up and say "I've tried to get a job, but it didn't work!"

 

[Griffpants]

Like a munchified episode of Normal Gossip, I bring an epic munchie post from a friend of a friend. It takes the form of a very dramatic public email to her state senator asking him to intervene after her long-suffering husband dumped her on her ass.

Link

Archive

Tl;dr: Mental ill woman goes apeshit because doctors have been misdiagnosing her VERY REAL AND VERY SERIOUS illnesses as mental health conditions! And now her husband is using his “political status” (read: he lost a city council race) to try to force her into treatment for mental illness, while simultaneously completely abandoning her!

Some of my favorite excerpts:

Spoiler

For years we have been looking for help but there is no treatment I haven’t tried and with my disorders there is nothing but time to heal according to specialists. It’s brain damage, neurological disorders, CPTSD/PTSD from abuse growing up and into my adulthood, Akathisia (NOT mental illness but caused by medical malpractice: It’s been over 5 years but the doctors have continued to throw drugs at me to try and cover up what happened to me. No I’m not crazy. I can back this up with doctors notes and specialists), Tardive Dyskinesia, dystonia (muscle disorder), chronic pain, tinnitus, and a whole long list of what I suffer from on a daily basis. People don’t believe it even though there is medical documentation & specialists who can confirm them all. I even went public for awhile because no one believed me, they all think I’m mentally unstable and ill. I have never heard voices, no psychosis, no mania. I didn’t even know what those things were until I started researching recently.

She names restless legs and ringing ears but none of her “neurological disorders.” Okay. Also, drink for CPTSD!

My ex groomed me from 15 & I was abused for a decade. I never received proper treatment from medical professionals—they didn’t know how bad it got. I had cognitive dissonance & brain damage from that relationship.

She has brain damage from a relationship? Were they playing football together? Also love that she puts "cognitive dissonance" before brain damage. Kinda makes me think she doesn't know what either of those phrases means.

I’m locked me out of Amazon, he changed all our passwords, NO TV services, NO clue what the bills are and how to pay them, he hasn’t paid the internet, the Pepco bill bounced and I had to use emergency funds to pay the phone bills so I at least have a way to contact people.

NO TV! And given that she hasn’t worked in years and her husband has allegedly cut her off financially, where are these “emergency funds” even coming from?

NO ONE knows what’s going on with me (his friends, our mutual friends & his family have no clue—or they do and don’t care. His mom won’t respond to my text from New Years) and how he’s abandoned me to fend for myself despite him being my unofficial caretaker.

Translation: My husband finally woke up and realized I’m a psychotic munchie and got the fuck out, and our mutual friends and family have all sided with him.

My hair needs to be cut really short like a pixie because he wouldn’t get me a hair appointment from his hairdresser. It’s a birds nest and I can’t scratch my scalp. My dystonia was keeping me from brushing it and it hasn’t been washed in months. I’ve done videos showing the neglect and the fact that he left me sick and throwing up and having diarrhea the day he left, I was so physically sick I was begging for help & I was ignored.

Hubby wouldn’t take her to the hairdresser! SPOUSAL ABUSE!

He has grabbed me & tried to shut me up by raising his hand. Just subtle abuse really. I was too sick to notice or even know what he was doing. There is a lot more like him leaving and going to someone’s home for the Holidays. We weren’t having a meal together. I dropped him off one time and was so upset that he wanted to go elsewhere but let it slide. On Thanksgiving this year he was gone again & just gave me leftovers. He even made cranberry sauce for them. He stopped cooking for me years ago.

The domestic violence escalates! He made her eat LEFTOVERS on Thanksgiving!

I need SSI, Medicaid, food stamps, rent help, bills help, restraining order, a lawyer, money for medical bills and expenses. I need to see my doctors & specialists. I need money for cannabis every week.

Save me, state senator Smith, you’re my only hope!

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

Sounds like she has psychosis with how strong she denies it and the tardive dyskinesia (caused by anti psychotics usually). Also delusions of abuse from innocuous things.

 

[Kittehclaws]

I found her husband on Maryland case search-I wonder if she knows he’s filed for divorce…

ETA-if she mentioned her husband filing my apologies for missing that detail. I was trying to make sure I hadn’t had a stroke while reading that rant.

 

[Adrenochrome Dreams]

Spoiler: Lyme sperging/story

Knew a guy who contracted honest to god Lyme disease hiking on a semi-wooded trail with his dog. The factor that complicated things for him was that he was a type 1 diabetic, which… to be fair any major infection can be a complication for type 1s because their immune systems are already whacked out from fighting their own bodies. They just threw IV Rocephin at him in the hospital, it was touch and go for a while but he finally pulled through it and the last I saw him he had no real leftover effects once he’d gotten through it. If that dude, who was already compromised, made a full recovery, most people can.

Yeah, “chronic Lyme” isn’t a thing.

People with diabetes are also more prone bacterial infections if their blood sugar frequently gets high, because the sugar feeds a lot of bacteria.

 

[adult goth gf]

Haven't visited this thread for a while but was reminded when I randomly saw a reel from Bee Crisp while doomscrolling, it seems she's sleeping in a tent instead of a bed ~because of trauma~

She so cut all her hair off ? And now claims to be a model too https://www.instagram.com/bernadettecrisp_official

 

[unexpected onions]

Haven't visited this thread for a while but was reminded when I randomly saw a reel from Bee Crisp while doomscrolling, it seems she's sleeping in a tent instead of a bed ~because of trauma~

View attachment 5687967

She so cut all her hair off ? And now claims to be a model too https://www.instagram.com/bernadettecrisp_official

Have they moved? That doesn't look like her room