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

the more I write about this topic the more I think it is animal cruelty to do this to them. If your balance is so poor you need support, get a cane or a walker. You lose your balance with an animal, you're liable to seriously injure it.
It's 100% fucked up. Most domesticated dogs and horses have fucked up bodies due to bad breeding and lack of excersise. They get all kinds of joint issues early on in their lives and to have a human putting excess pressure on them and altering their gait for selfish reasons is actually just nasty exploitation. They should get a fucking rollator and leave those animals alone.
 
I never really thought about it this way. So I guess her biggest accomplishment in life is saving a bunch of horses from the life Flirty has to live. :winner:

The thought of a group of service horses in Disney World is absolutely terrifying. Imagine witnessing that as a horse.
One of Abrea's service horse friends lives in Ocala, Florida and takes her horse to the theme parks with her.
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They seemed to be making very tentative plans to take both their horses to Disney after they hung out a few years ago. But Abrea's broke and Flirty went into colic and almost died last time she took her on a much shorter and less stressful trip, so it blessedly never happened.

That woman also trains freaking cattle dogs to be "service dogs". I love cattle dogs but they're nippy, stubborn, ridiculously high-energy herding dogs who, like horses, are only really happy and healthy when they're out in a pasture running around doing dog stuff, and they can be super apprehensive towards strangers.

as an aside, the worst breed I have ever seen used as an attention-seeker's "service dog" is a fila brasilero, a guardian / catch breed so notoriously distrustful towards strangers that in the few places they can be shown for conformation the judges can only view them from a distance and are not allowed to touch or approach. They are instinctually driven to respond to people approaching their family/property/personal space uninvited by biting and holding on, often knocking their target to the ground and holding them down with their body weight while biting them. They view everything as a potential threat they must protect you from, and they are extremely powerful. and I found some asshat pooner owner-training one to be her service dog, taking it around little kids at the playground to prove hers was totally fine with it. I couldn't find the account the last few times I looked for it which makes me hope she just axed her stupid plan rather than the dog finally snapped at someone who tried to approach her.
 
as an aside, the worst breed I have ever seen used as an attention-seeker's "service dog" is a fila brasilero, a guardian / catch breed so notoriously distrustful towards strangers that in the few places they can be shown for conformation the judges can only view them from a distance and are not allowed to touch or approach.
They aren't quite as insane, but I'd love to see someone trying to make a service dog out of a Black Russian Terrier. Imagine one of those big bastards at Disney.
 
I understand having attachments to certain breeds or feeling like you really jive with, idk, herding breeds over every other type of dog. What I don't get is why these girls who are so terrified of being 'fake-claimed' and so obsessed with making their dogs behave in public access that they spend all their waking time trying to fit peg in hole don't just stick with goldens and labs. So many of their problems would be solved if they just stuck with goldens and labs. Even I am more likely to give it a pass and say the dog is legitimate if it's a golden or lab, both online and irl. There's one florida munchie walking around with a black lab in a guide vest, handler is always wearing dark lenses. It took me years to figure out she's not blind, it's just another psych dog, because the first 30 times i encountered her online my brain said "guide dog" and I did not investigate. Same with abby sams. When I first started digging into her I just took it at face value that her dog was from a program like she claimed because he's a lab. Nope, the "program' is jus one of her retard friends who took a dog who was locked in an outdoor run for two years and slapped a vest on him.

But I guess if everyone has goldens and labs and you're the only one with a cane corso it makes you more special than all the other special little girls bringing their doggies to disney.
 
Other than getting attention, what is the advantage of an animal for balance over a walker?

So many of their problems would be solved if they just stuck with goldens and labs.
On one hand, they're good-tempered, easy to train, plausible as service dogs, and relatively low maintenance. On the other hand, you don't get nearly as much attention with just another lab.

A lot of these dog breeds are not only not good service dogs, they're not even good dogs for disabled people to own. Some breeds require a ton of exercise, have instincts that cannot be overcome, and/or are headcases themselves (I'm looking at you, Bernese Mountain Dogs).
 
On one hand, they're good-tempered, easy to train, plausible as service dogs, and relatively low maintenance. On the other hand, you don't get nearly as much attention with just another lab.
Goldens can be a hot mess, too. It's all about good socialization at an early age and good breeding. Because they're so popular, breeders tend to get sloppy. I've seen some nasty goldens before, as well as a lot of mean labs being allowed to "mouth" random strangers and lunge at other dogs because the owner assumes they're just playful. Nothing like having a huge hunting breed snapping at you in the farmers market...

I know shepards were common for service dogs back in the day. I know someone who actually breeds and trains them for it still and they seem like they're damn good for the job. Less likely for a random stranger to run up and try to hug a dog they associate with cops, too.

The one that gets me is people claiming their anxious, reactive doodles as a guide dog.
 
Funny. every GSD I have ever known has been a neurotic, compulsively barking mess with wrecked joints. I still like them because all dogs is good dogs, but yeah lol I was about to list them as one of the breeds I'm glad is being used less often. They're great police dogs though.
 
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It seems to me with all munchie type pacientes, they all have arrested development around 12/13, whether they're 15, 18, or 20. It's just like a hard stop. I wonder why that point.
Because that's the point they are expected to start taking on a little responsibility as a human, both in life and for their own damn emotions. You start getting criticism instead of hand holding, and you might even be asked to be uncomfortable.

They long for the days of being amazing for that crayon drawing and having mommy make their meals, when getting corrected came gentle with few expectations. "You're so smart!"

The dream: doing nothing, expecting everything, and NEVER being responsible for your own actions.
 
Because that's the point they are expected to start taking on a little responsibility as a human, both in life and for their own damn emotions. You start getting criticism instead of hand holding, and you might even be asked to be uncomfortable.

They long for the days of being amazing for that crayon drawing and having mommy make their meals, when getting corrected came gentle with few expectations. "You're so smart!"

The dream: doing nothing, expecting everything, and NEVER being responsible for your own actions.
It's also a bigger shock for girls. Small boys are often criticised for their behaviour as it tends to be more boisterous whereas many little girls are put on pedestals, especially by codependent mothers. So when puberty hits and expectations rise, it's a much steeper learning curve and a more sudden adjustment, which is why I think more girls go down the munchie route than boys. It's also a reflection of the different ways boys and girls get attention in these very bougie families. Girls get attention and sympathy when they're sick, boys get told to get over it, there's school tomorrow. Boys get attention by winning competitive things or achieving, which leads to different, if no less harmful, neuroses later in life.

Not all munchies are girls of course. Go look at the Andrew Ditch thread to see the same psychology at play, and the noticeably harsher treatment he gets for his malingering compared to the girls in this thread.
 
Hello, I was wanting to see more writeups in this thread, so I figured be the change you want to see in the world, and all that.
This account has been mentioned up-thread, so let’s get into it:

Name: Talia (nee Madeiros) & Timothy Smith
Location: Walpole, Massachusetts, United States
Instagram: finding_vulneraries
Tiktok: taliasmith2021
Facebook: Talia Smith
Various others- twitter, bluesky, telegram, lemon8, snapchat, linkedin, etc

Claims: Talia Smith allegedly went “from healthy to hospice” at the hands of a small dose of fluoroquinolone antibiotics. She has termed this being “floxed”: aka she is suffering severe and debilitating side effects after “just three pills” of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin (ciproxin). Let me just say this: floxed is new, floxed is hot, and I predict that floxed is the next great trend to sweep across the munchie space.

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Unrelated but imagine staring into a camera, making this wrinkly-ass sadface, and being like, "yup, this is perfect content."

Scientific background- Being “floxed,” as Talia calls it in her accounts, refers to suffering severe CNS toxicity and other neurodegenerative side effects from fluoroquinolones. In fairness, this is a real (yet rare) possible side effect of ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, moxifloxacin, and others. As with most things in the munchie world, the lie begins with a kernel of truth. A large cohort study involving over 976,000 individuals found that fluoroquinolone use was associated with a modest increase in the risk of CNS dysfunction compared to other antibiotics; 0.95% for fluoroquinolones, compared to 0.88% risk in users of other antibiotics (source).

Of note is that “CNS dysfunction” refers to a broad range of symptoms, including: headache, restlessness, dizziness, drowsiness, insomnia, hallucinations, agitation delirium, etc . Other symptoms include tendon rupture, neuropathy, and rebound superinfection. Risk factors for developing CNS symptoms are advanced age, large dose, long-term use, and pre-existing renal dysfunction. This will be important when we discuss the symptoms the Smiths appear to be having.

I’ve seen it once before in real life. A 90-something-odd patient who was hospitalized for infection complications after an outpatient surgery, got a large IV dose of cipro, and it fried her ancient brain. She spent hours straight rambling about religion and what it’s like to die. Once the cipro drip stopped, she went back to normal within about 12 hours.

In short, CNS side effects of ciprofloxacin are a real, albeit rare, occurrence.

The Smiths: This couple appears to have met sometime before 2011. A 2012 picture of their wedding is on their profile. Early pictures of them are either scrubbed, or on a different, more private facebook account. They appear to have two children, unclear if they are the biological parents or if one or the other is a step-parent (they were married after he was paralyzed in 2011, but the kids are definitely older than that so idk, they could really have any type of family arrangement. The kids don’t appear in their social media very much).
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Timothy- Timothy appears to have been a part of the US Marines, and in 2011 experienced an injury that led to some level of paralysis. A local Boston news station says he has quadreplegia. He now appears to be full-time in a wheelchair because of this. Talia describes this time as spending “9 months in 3 different hospitals and in different countries.” Unclear what the injury was, how it occurred, or where it occurred. He plays much less of a role in social media. His hobbies seem to include doing things to support the Marine Corps, such as social events, walks to raise awareness, etc. A GoFundMe post states that prior to her own illness, Talia was his primary caregiver. I would love to leave the husband out of this as he doesn’t seem to be munching, himself. Except that Talia often uses him being in a wheelchair as a prop for her videos of her being in a wheelchair, so he is involved in some degree.

Talia- Is in charge of the social media accounts. Very little information available about her early life, aside from a few family throwback pictures? Her linkedin says she has a masters degree in technology management from Bridgewater State University, where she attended from 2000-2006. One news article says she is 44 and resides in Norwood, Massachusetts.
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According to a video she “worked my way up the corporate ladder,” and linkedin has her working as a “senior manager- PMO tools” at CVS Health– so she was working in a managerial role in the healthcare space, but not directly with patients or in a clinical setting. She describes her life prior to illness in a video: “I worked out everyday, I ate healthy every day, Lady Gaga was my alter ego [lmao], and I was working on a cookbook.” Perhaps to friends and family, she seemed like a busy career woman/ mom who had it all.

Floxxed: Talia claims that in April 17, 2021, she “took 3 pills of cipro for a UTI,” then she “ended up on hospice for 9 months, weighing 60 pounds.” The local Boston news article says 65 pounds, just to point out the two different numbers. She says, “I thought if I worked out and ate well, which I did, that nothing could take me down, but I was so wrong.”
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The GoFundMe states she was “left unable to work or take care of her husband anymore or herself… she had rapid health decline and was placed on hospice, end of life care, in September 2021. By some miracle, Talia survived, but she is still confined to a bed and wheelchair.” At that time, she was allegedly still on palliative care. Her linkedin lists her job from that point forward as “health break” lololol. Since then, she’s been pouring herself into social media, writing letters to the FDA, sending around surveys, going on TV and podcasts, etc.

An article she worked with Daily Mail on says her initial symptoms were that her “muscles became so stiff she couldn’t move.” In the local Masachusettes article, she describes her symptoms as “stabbing pains, like in my heels, up my legs, like shooting pains, like I was getting electrocuted,” Smith said. “And I was like: ‘What the heck is this?’”

“One week I was showering myself,” she said. “The next, I was sitting in a chair showering myself. The next I couldn’t get my hands above my head.” In the Daily Mail article, she says, “I started having pains all over my body… my vision actually changed… I had problem swallowing.”

In the local Masachusettes article, she says she blames doctors for prescribing her the antibiotic, because she claims it is so strong– one of the strongest– that it should only be used as a last resort to treatment-resistant infections (this, of course, is not true. A culture is used for prescribing guidelines, and cipro is given if the provider thinks it will be effective against whatever bacteria is growing). And whereas yes, cipro does have some possible side effects and warnings, it is by far not the most toxic antibiotic available.
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“‘I actually said: ‘This is a pretty strong antibiotic,’” Smith recalled in an interview with Investigative Reporter Ted Daniel. “Like, ‘Is this the right one I should be taking? And is there anything I need to know?’ And they actually told me, ‘No, there’s nothing you need to be aware of. This is a very safe and effective antibiotic for UTIs.’” … Smith said her doctor did not inform her that the FDA has a black box warning label for Cipro and other fluoroquinolones.'" (local Masachusettes article)

The GoFundMe by her father adds this further detail of her alleged illness(es): “To complicate matters further, she developed Mast Cell Activation Syndrome after taking the antibiotic, which caused her to have many allergies and left her unable to eat or drink.” (explains the 60-65 lbs, I guess?). “She can only eat 6 foods due to Mast Cell… and requires 24/7 care for her survival.” The Daily Mail article claims she can’t “chew and swallow food unless it is pureed first.” A video from April 17, 2025 says she is “down to 5 foods” and is eating what looks perhaps like semolina porridge.

Talia claims that she needs explorative, “non-Western medicine” treatments such as NAET (Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique)-- a form of alternative medicine that aims to eliminate allergies through a combination of kinesiology, acupressure, and acupuncture. As well as radio frequency wave treatment, peptide shots, etc. She has taken to calling her alleged reaction to cipro an “Adverse Drug Event,” which is any unfavorable reaction to any drug. This has allowed her to reach a larger audience when she tags it, as an adverse drug event ranges anywhere from an allergic reaction onwards and happens tens of millions of times a year in any given country’s healthcare system. Her GoFundMe has $14,980 raised of a $22k goal.
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Counterpoints: There seems to be no real relation between the symptoms she’s currently claiming and the documented possible adverse effects of ciprofloxacin. Some of what she describes could sound like tendon rupture, some could possibly be neuropathy. However, developing mast cell and only being able to eat 5-6 total foods, needing your food pureed, and getting down to 60-65 pounds sounds so much more like an eating disorder than anything else. I feel the frequent mentions of her pre-illness “eating right” might hint at that as well.

Mast Cell itself (outside of the munchie world) is so rare, and I personally have never heard of it being caused by antibiotics. Symptoms like extreme fatigue to the point of being bedbound, learning how to walk again, etc. don’t correspond with anything, really. Side note, but it seems munchies really love the “learning how to walk again” narrative? And of course the biggest counterpoint to all this is that side effects from fluoroquinolones like tendon rupture, neuropathy, etc. are SO RARE to begin with, with very little evidence (if any) that it causes a long-term syndrome. She claims that the FDA is “gaslighting” the public and claiming what she calls fluoroquinolone toxicity is not real


My theory is that Talia was experiencing caregiver fatigue from her husband/ burnout from a high-stress corporate job and being a mom. From how she depicts her previous life, it seems like she felt a desire to be perfect. Perhaps she did actually experience some neuropathy as a side effect of ciprofloxacin… and then just kind of went with it and devolved into a skeleton who only eats porridge and makes someone else bathe her. And the treatments she claims to need are just bogus, of course. I would love to know how radio waves would cure ongoing neuropathy.

That’s all. I didn’t want to get much into the scientific etiology of fluoroquinolone side effects, but would very much welcome a discussion on it (especially if I’ve missed anything).
 
Apparently its quite common for old dears to go doolally while on IV antibiotics, of many kinds. As you describe it creates symptoms somewhere between confusion, dementia and psychosis, but it's not very likely that an 87 year old woman is going to cause much chaos, the impact of the antibiotics often makes them too tired to do anything except sit in a chair anyway. And as soon as the drugs leave their system they go back to normal and there are no lasting effects.

What this woman is describing is not that, at all. She's alleging a vast range of ongoing neuromuscular effects that have never ever been seen together before.
 
Apparently its quite common for old dears to go doolally while on IV antibiotics,
It's more likely that it's infection related delirium, that resolves once the infection resolves.

My theory is that Talia was experiencing caregiver fatigue from her husband/ burnout from a high-stress corporate job and being a mom.
bingo. once I saw the husband was in a wheelchair, one of the biggest pizzle pieces fell into place. it's like when you find out a munchie has a sibling who had cancer or an ED.
 
Ooh girls, our favourite doctor wannabe Alexandra has risen from the dead and blessed us with this enticing PUBLIC STATEMENT insinuating that even though her previous university had very much kicked her out, she's conned some other less salubrious institution into letting her finish and get a degree.

My bet is that it's somewhere overseas, she was linked to an Australian uni or hospital at one stage but I would hope the Australians (who have pretty much the same style of medical training as the UK) wouldn't have been fooled. Maybe one of those extremely dodgy looking Carribbean universities that lure in US hopefuls (who then can't get a job once they graduated because they're now classified as IMGs).

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I wait with baited breath for more from this idiot!
 
the more I write about this topic the more I think it is animal cruelty to do this to them. If your balance is so poor you need support, get a cane or a walker. You lose your balance with an animal, you're liable to seriously injure it.
Oh I fully agree, I think there has been a lot of "normalizing" of mobility aids among the younger gens lately. I think most of them are small time munchies (think Martina of eat your kimchi/Simon and martina/king kogi claiming EDS and needing a wheelchair for it) but even actually disabled people can benefit from more people being familiarized with the concept invisible disabilities that make mobility a problem.
 
Ooh girls, our favourite doctor wannabe Alexandra has risen from the dead and blessed us with this enticing PUBLIC STATEMENT insinuating that even though her previous university had very much kicked her out, she's conned some other less salubrious institution into letting her finish and get a degree.

My bet is that it's somewhere overseas, she was linked to an Australian uni or hospital at one stage but I would hope the Australians (who have pretty much the same style of medical training as the UK) wouldn't have been fooled. Maybe one of those extremely dodgy looking Carribbean universities that lure in US hopefuls (who then can't get a job once they graduated because they're now classified as IMGs).

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I wait with baited breath for more from this idiot!
I am willing to bet she was kicked off due to her weight. She likely has a badly concealed eating disorder. I know of at least 2 other people who have been unceremoniously booted from medicine-related degrees for this. It would be much harder to kick her out for other reasons.
 
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