meta update

• I've moved more blogs back from the short-lived personal blog at another address.  There's still some more crap I want to bring back here, but it'll keep.
• I've also moved a lot of stuff to the defunct blog roll, and deleted a bunch that have nothing to do with what they used to be (and of little interest) or are nothing more than parked domains.  I hope to look for more interesting blogs and sites.
• I want to use the name Crazy Meds: The Blog for the real Crazy Meds blog's Feedburner feed.  That happens to be the name of the feed for this blog.  So if the three of you who are subscribed to this via Feedburner could please resubscribe via the form way the fuck down at the bottom of the page so I can delete the existing feed I'd appreciate it.
• The essay on criminalizing mental illness as a misguided method of protection against violence is now available on OpEd News.

Crazy Meds: The Blog

In a desperate attempt to SEO the fuck out of Crazy Meds

Because I can’t deal with my life and need to do something that appears to be productive

Crazy Meds has needed an actual blog for some time.  A place for announcements, news items, and some short-attention-span tidbits from here or elsewhere.  So now it has one.

This blog will continue to exist, but it will now be more narcissistic personal and procrastination bait. I’ll still post notices of impending software upgrades or anything else that will cause a significant interruption of service there, and anything where an off-site location for posting is required because the entire domain is down.  As well as the occasional site update of note.  All the links to research, medical, and assorted pharma-related blogs and sites have been moved to the new blog.

Posts to the G+ page and Facebook page will continue as they always have.  While anyone can, in theory, read public posts to the G+ page without having a G+ account, who does?  Not that anyone reads the blogspot blog all that much either.

Can't Even Buy Happiness

I've been cycling through various stages of depression, each day, for several weeks.  At least it's not the hell of tripolar ultradian cycling where I'll swing between manic, mixed and depressed several times an hour.  This is the gentle wash flavor.  Although a mood state can still last no more than 20 minutes, I'm rarely doing anything extreme like plummeting from sub-baseline to in bed, fetal position, shivering, crying and scaring the cats.  It takes at least half an hour to get from one extreme, if mildly depressed can be called extreme, to the other, and six hours or longer to get back.  I'm not hitting bottom, not even close, and I don't even reach my current low point on a daily basis, so this isn't a particularly bad episode.

I can't decide if I should try the 25 mg of Topamax every hour.  Not being able to decide is a key symptom of depression.  When I cycle through mania and mixed along with depressed I know I'm fucked up enough to make the cycling stop no matter where I land.  When I'm like this, I'm not sure.  I could stop cycling, but where?  With tripolar ultradian cycling the decision is easy, euphoric mania, dysphoric mania or depressed.as.fuck is better than going through those and mixed states - I guess that really makes it quadrapolar cycling - every five to ten minutes, and I figure I stand at least a 75% chance of landing on something better.  Since I figure all that extra Topamax is going to knock the mania dead as well, the odds of ending up mixed or either flavor of manic are pretty long, so it's going to be baseline or depressed, and depressed is vastly better than ultradian cycling.  But now?  I have no idea how I'd end up.

The extra 10mg of protriptyline is helping, but only in keeping things from getting worse.


The local Equinox is Monday.  Looks like six more weeks of feeling like this.  Unless I manage to decide tomorrow to try the Topamax cure for ultradian cycling.  And it works.

I need to get my tax shit together.  I have most of it.  I'm stuck.  Dealing with my life is painful.

I tried some retail therapy.  I found some atlases from 1930s Germany and the USSR in the 1940s, as well as late 19th and early 20th century America.  I have my eye on similar items.  I picked up, all via teh interwebs of course, a CD of stuff from The Birthday Party that I didn't have and other music.  I looked around for records I used to own and miss.  The downside of having a bunch of vinyl worth over $100 the each means replacing a few lost items costs hundreds of dollars.  More reasons to buy current music I guess.

The Missoulian had an article about the Montana Valley Bookstore - a local portal to L-space - trying to reduce its inventory so they are closer to the advertised 100,000 books.  The article mentioned how the owners donated boxes of encyclopedia sets to the Missoula Library book sale.  Had I known they were giving away reference books I would have been there with my own boxes in the bed of my truck.  I have two full sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, with books of the year, and various other encyclopedia, dictionaries, atlases, and other reference books going back to the 1870s.  I have four bookcases, two custom-made, dedicated to non-medical reference works, and two more for medical texts.  When do they publish this stellar news?  Right before my birthday.

Timing is everything.

I'm slowly moving the blogrolls back from my short-lived, personal crap-only blog.  The Panoply of Stupidity, Humiliation, Pain and Absurdity is up, although some of the defunct entries need to be added to the defunct list, and new sites need to be found to replace them.  The medical blogrolls need editing as well.

Fine. Birthday. OK.

OK, I'll give in to popular demand and blog about my boring, stupid life.  Here.  One blog to to rule them all...

I guess it's like cable/satellite TV channels.  Back in the YIIKes decade, which is when TV peaked, specialty stations aired programs about whatever their manifesto stated they were about.  The Hitler Channel, AKA the History Channel, was all about History - especially WWII.  Now it's the Superstition, Greed, and Conjecture Channel.  The main problem I have with satellite TV is how most everything has become the Miscellaneous Channel, showing the same stupid movies, stupid 'reality' shows, and syndicated repeats that have nothing to do with whatever the fuck their name is.  Not enough people appreciate specialization.  Fine.

I'm sorry I haven't replied to everyone's birthday wishes.   I've been dealing with a bad case of depression, not wanting to talk to anyone, and anxiety over Google hating me for some reason.   I've also been avoiding my life for too long, and I'm trying to deal with that as well.   By procrastinating, of course.  I really need a personal assistant to deal with my life. 

I hope the pharmacy was able to get Roxane's protriptyline this month.  The stuff from Rising is just like Barr's: acceptable, but my depression threshold is low.  Although the pills themselves are pretty cool, all nice and slippery with a retro-futuristic imprint of Σ (sigma) on one side and 7 on the other.

What did I get for my birthday?  Google changed their search algorithm.  Crazy Meds is plummeting in search results.  Again.  It's April 2012 all over again.  When you do a search for Cymbalta, or Wellbutrin, or Effexor, or Lexapro, or Topamax, or Lamictal, or Invega, or most any drug I have a page on, you should see Crazy Meds in the top five results.  Now I'm lucky if it shows up in the top ten.  Traffic was at 15,000 - 21,000 visitors a day.  Now it's more like 11,000 - 19,000, with revenue down just as much.  If you think that's still a shitload of people and I should be stupidly happy about it, keep in mind this is how I make a living, and one of the things I'm having a hard time dealing with is finding health insurance.  Even though in Montana there are all of two companies selling insurance to individuals, trying to figure out which plan to get is daunting.  No matter what I'm looking at $500 a month, or more, with no idea what meds are going to cost.  And the domain host costs $5,000 a year.  Don't bother telling me about how great your host is and costs so much less, even if you get 21,000 people a day, or more, visiting your site.  While running resource-intensive applications like Invision Power Board and downloading a shitload of .pdf files.  Lunarpages is a great domain host, and there's more to hosting a site than technology.  So grossing $3,000 a month isn't as much as it seems, and I won't be making that much if the traffic and ad rates keep falling.

Where was I?  So what may or may not be related to the decline of the Crazy Meds brand in Google's search results is vanishing +1 numbers and page rank status.  Take a look at the Crazy Meds home page.  Now look at it from this link.  Notice any difference?  The +1 count in the first one is 18.  I don't know what it is in the second one, but it's a fuck of a lot more than 18.  The +1 counts on some pages differ depending on if you look at it on www.crazymeds.us or crazymeds.us, on some pages it makes no difference, and on some pages they've just vanished no matter which version of the URL you use.  If you have the Google page rank indicator plugin you'll see that the home page is unranked.  It should have a rank of at least five.  A couple other pages that were ranked three or four are also unranked.

This is being discussed on a Google+ Developers' G+ Community, because anyone with a website who implements the +1 button is now a 'developer'.

Google has become the corporation Dilbert works for and I get to feel as frustrated, depressed, and anxious as some code monkey trapped in a cubicle without the pleasure being able to write code any more.

Depending on how bad my need to procrastinate gets, I'll move the Panoply of Stupidity, Humiliation, Pain and Absurdity back here, along with other bits and pieces of the other blogs.  Everything is miscellaneous bullshit.


Update 1: The +1 button problem apparently wasn't complicated enough.  It seems like the version at www.crazymeds.us is incrementing again, although it started at 18, so as of Monday, 25 February, it's at 20 something.  The count at crazymeds.us, no www, was over 200 yesterday.  This morning it was at 193.

Update 2: The pharmacy didn't have Roxane's flavor of protriptyline, so it's another month of Rising.

Let's Get Personal

So I have yet another blog, because I like having things sorted into neat piles of like with like.  This blog is now for for site updates, notices of impending software updates, new t-shirts, etc.  Along with the Facebook page, Forum section, and page on Crazy Meds.  It's still the place for site status updates in case the forum, or the entire fucking site goes tits up.

The focus of this blog will be shifting to links to the latest from various psych, neuro, medical, pharm, mental health, and assorted other blogs and sites related to what Crazy Meds is all about.  I might even post stuff along those lines that is appropriate in the context of a blog, which will probably be duplicated in various locations on the forum.

The new blog will be about my life, and the usual miscellaneous crap that shows up in random blogs across teh interwebs.  It's also the new home of the Panoply of Stupidity, Humilation, Pain, and Absurdity, along with the blog lists of the surreal and the geekness.  Unfortunately there's a bug in the blogger software, so I can't change the title of the entries.  So it looks shittier than it otherwise would.

Slight Redesign

With all the traffic coming in from Crazy Meds itself, I figured I should change the focus of the blogrolls to something more in line with the Crazy Meds site.  Hence all the pharmacology, brain, and assorted medical blogs are now first, followed by links to similarly-themed sites that aren't blogs, then emergency room/department blogs, then the panoply, other blogrolls, and links to other sites.  I also added a shitload of blogs to the neuro-pharma-med roll.

There is also another Facebook page, just for site content and status updates.

I should have known better

Just because I'm less susceptible to mood swings doesn't mean they won't happen.  I wind up getting depressed and being unable to deal with my life.  Oh well.  It's been over couple years since I was last depressed, and that's the longest since I've been on meds.  As part of distracting myself and convincing myself that I'm doing something I did a huge reorg of the blogrolls.  I've pruned dead links, moved defunct blogs, added a shitload of new blogs to the Panoply, and added a new section dedicated to Emergency Rooms/Departments.  Now you don't have to just take my word for it, you really don't want to go to the ER unless you absolutely must need to.

Who knows when I'll do all the stuff that needs to be done.

Abilify Page, Updates, More Cites, and I'm Sure it's Just a Coincidence

At long last, a brand new med page.  Abilify.  It may not be a new med, but at least it's a med that's being advertised.  I'm still working on various pages, but the Basic Overview Page is mostly done.

I've finally added links to sites with consumer reviews.  Most of the ratings/reviews are from the Big Five rating sites:  Ask a patient   Revolution Health   Patients like me   WebMD   Drugs.com 

I have links for these meds: 

Abilify  BuSpar  Cymbalta  Invega  Keppra  Lamictal  Lexapro  Paxil  Risperdal  Seroquel  Topamax  Wellbutrin  Zoloft  Zyprexa

Crazy Meds was mentioned in another journal back in February, although it's in an article I'd file under "blame teh InterWebs.". From Psychotropics Without Borders: Ethics and Legal Implications of Internet-Based Access to Psychiatric Medications

Internet-based consumers have access to extensive medication information through websites such as erowid.com, crazymeds.com, and drugs.com, among many others.

That is one broad spectrum. 

We also turned up as a source here, but it was one of those incidents when we seemed to be the only place someone could find the MADRS at the time.  It wasn't the first time we were the only available source for one of the psych tests. 

In a Zyprexa vs. Abilify study I found I learned that "which sucks less" has an official name - "time to all-cause discontinuation" - and that they run trials just to measure that. Whichever med has a longer time to all-cause discontinuation is the one that sucks less.
What's funny is when you run a search on PubMed and Google Scholar, the terms "all-cause discontinuation" and "all-cause medication discontinuation" are used in papers exclusively about psychiatric medications, and that comparative studies about how long people stay meds based upon which sucks less don't start appearing until 2005. Prior to then the term appears in a single paper about beta blockers and heart attacks, and then it was just to indicate that all the reasons for discontinuing are all lumped together.
It has to be just a coincidence that researchers didn't start doing studies comparing psych meds - using the fancy new term or not - to find out nothing more than which one sucked less (or the least) until over a year after I started a somewhat popular site about psych meds that used data from published studies, along with anecdotal evidence I collected and consumer ratings & reviews, to determine which ones sucks less than others.

I'm whining about my crazy & shitty health elsewhere

I've started a blog on Crazy Meds exclusively for whining about my mental and physical health problems.

Queror ergo sum  I complain, therefore I am.

Everything else, Crazy Meds updates, status reports, whining about other aspects of my boring life, and anything else I'd bother writing about, will still be here.

Nothing to see here

First the stuff that matters - 

I've updated the Know Your Sources section, which includes:

• What is the purpose of Crazy Meds?
• Who are these crazy people?
• Why do they think they know so much?
• Where does their money come from?
• Are they part of the CONSPIRACY that is monitoring my online activities?
• How do I get past their anti-telepathic mindcontrol tinfoil hats? 

That took care of the site's HON Code certification for the next 12 months.

I'm done with most of the Things You Need to Know When Taking Crazy Meds / Basic Crap all Neuro-Psychiatric Meds have in Common section, which includes:

• Tips on How to Take Crazy Meds 
• Tips on How to Stop Taking Crazy Meds
• Common Side Effects 
• Meds & Supplements 
• What You Should Know Before Buying Meds Online

I'm still working on the updated Brand vs. Generic page.  No telling when that will be finished.

I've also juggled a bunch of blogs between defunct and the panoply of stupidity etc.

No need to read any further...

Extreme couponing has arrived in small town Montana.  I moved out here to avoid shit like that, but I should know better; if I live where broadband is available, and near where cable TV is available, there's no escaping the bits of civilization I can't stand.  The clerks at the grocery store were acting like Elvis showed up to buy some peanut butter and bunny bread.  They couldn't wrap their heads around the concept of people 'buying' four items (I don't know what, just making it to Superior to get my meds and a couple things from the store was a heroic conquest for me that day) with nothing more than two coupons from two different sources, and purchasing nothing else at that.

Fifty-one out of 54 counties in Montana have had a state of emergency declared due to the flooding.  So far Mineral county is one of three with no flood emergency.  Yet.  Instead we have to have other forms of excitement, like a bank robbery in St. Regis and a murder in Superior.

I had the snow tires swapped for the 'regular' (i.e. all terrain) tires on the truck, so at least I didn't have to deal with inclement weather when I drove to Spokane to see my shrink.  Twice.  Because the there was appointment confusion.  I should have called when I didn't get the usual appointment verification call, but thinking clearly hasn't been one of my strong suits of late.  It still took me three hours each way, and not because there was snow on the road (but plenty on each side) going over Lookout Pass, but because the shocks were shot and I couldn't drive any faster than 60.

 

Tuesday night Stephen Colbert smoked a pipe on his show.  It's not the first time he's done that.  While the main reason I smoke a pipe is a bowl of pipe tobacco is about all I want to smoke in a day, another reason is the chance of pipe smoking ever being cool-popular like cigar smoking is somewhere in the neighborhood of non-existent.  Still, I think even Mr. Colbert won't be able to elevate the pipe from eccentric curmudgeon territory.

Blog roll updates

Once again I've moved some blogs to and from the defunct list.  Nothing new was added.  Anyone who reads the blogs regularly will notice, most of you won't.  I still feel like crap, so I was barely paying attention to what I did.

New and Removed Entries on the Panoply of Blogs

The following blogs have been moved to the Defunct, but not Forgotten blogroll:

A canna’ change the laws of physics

Adnoxious

Ask A Urinal - Wisdom From Bathroom Graffitti

Fuck You, Penguin

Grammar Police a.k.a. GrammarCops

Making Maps: DIY Cartography

Musings of a phenomenologist

Scalpel or Sword?

Things I've Learned from Wikipedia

This is why we love them

Why The Fuck do You Have a Kid?

They still have great content and, like back issues of Skymall Magazine, if you haven't read it before it's new to you.

Crass-Pollination: An ER blog is now invitation-only.  Pole Leaning Douchebag and Don't Judge my Hair completely vanished.  The latter is sorely missed.

The good news is there are new blogs to take up the space, although not necessarily the place, of the recently removed entries:

Autocomplete fail

Gross N00dz

Learn from my fail

My Very Worst Job

My Very Worst Roommate

People Of Public Transit

That's my boss

Tweetbaggery

Up On The Fridge

Woman fail

Autocomplete fail is the fifth such site I've come across.  Gross N00dz is just that, some of the grossest people you've ever seen with no clothes on.  There may not be enough bleach on the planet to clean your eyes.  The content warning, or something, prevents the last update and title from coming through.  Remember: once seen, it cannot be unseen.

I managed to get the Picture Pool from Texts from Last Night to update.  You need to have a Flickr account to see it.  I still can't get the Horse Head blogs to cooperate.

Pruning the Panoply 2

I've pruned various defunct or defunct-seeming sites from my various blog rolls.  Most are still available in a new section further down.

I've kept some that have a history of dormancy, e.g. Hospital Food.  They may or may not be moved at a later date.

Some entries have misleading dates.  The Flickr version of Texts from last night is updated several times a day, but the feed I'm getting is updated only if someone posts to the discussion.  If the folks at Not Hired haven't received a truly awful resume in some time they'll post a classic, and that will get tagged as being a year old.  The Horse Head Huffer blogs (Spare some LOL, What the Face and others) have dates all over the map.

I'll probably be adding new sites to the various blog rolls in the relatively near future.

Pruning the Panoply

Blogrolls are limited to 125 entries.  I've spun off some of the entries from the Panoply of Humiliation etc. into a list of blogs dealing with the surreal, and deleted a couple that are unlikely to return.

Meanwhile an additional 25mg a day of Topamax is allowing me to drink caffeinated tea and work on crossword puzzles without an aura.  I might be able to be as partially functional as I had been a couple of weeks ago.

More schadenfreude for all!

The panoply of stupidity, humiliation, shame & absurdity has grown to over 120 sites, and at least 100 of them are still active.  I might be depressed, but at least I can enjoy how fucked up things are for other people.

It won't matter when more of those sites become moribund.  Per Cipolla's first basic law of human stupidity, Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. there will always be idiots doing ridiculous things and other people documenting the results.

You bet the Internet is just like high school

I finally had my yearbook picture taken. I.e. I now have a Facebook page. Why? Someone invited me. I'm socially indifferent, it's all the same to me.

It's probably set up incorrectly. That would just figure.

As if anyone were reading this, one might have noticed the ever-expanding list of sites that are far better to read. It's just a reflection on how I'm avoiding my life. I'm coming to terms with giving up.