The world's prettiest octopus.

If there are even tiny particles of milk or peanuts in the air, he will end up in the emergency room. He is basically allergic to life and has been in intensive care twice in the last 2 years. This robot allows him to go to school. He can learn, interact with students and teachers, and make friends that aren’t nurses and doctors. 

Sometimes when I tell people I have to work from bed most days, they respond with, “I wish I could do that.” or “That sounds awesome.”

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. the planes were also so noisy that to stop germans from hearing them combing and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

girl pilots (◕‿◕✿)

Fact 1: Although technologically obsolete as of WWII, the Polikarpov Po-2 “Kukuruznik” biplanes flown by the 588th Night Bomber Regiment were in no way ” the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world.” The Po-2 was first flown in 1929 and remained in production until 1953 due to its low cost and extreme reliability. It is, in fact, the second most produced aircraft in history, and the most produced biplane in history. The night bombers flew brand new, specially modified Po-2s fitted with bomb racks and machine guns.

Fact 2: The Po-2 was extremely quiet; Germans nicknamed it the Nähmaschine (“sewing machine”) due to the muted rattling sound its tiny little 99-horsepower radial engine made. The night bombers would fly these quiet little planes just a few meters off the ground, then climb to higher altitude, cut the engine, and glide to the attack point so that the Germans would have no warning of an incoming attack other than wind whistling through the wing bracing-wires. It wasn’t because the engines were unreliable, it was a planned attack pattern.

Fact 3: Saying “their leader flew over 200 missions” is both inaccurate and damning with faint praise. Whereas most combat pilots fly only one or two sorties per day, all of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment pilots flew multiple missions every night, with the record being eighteen missions flown back-to-back-to-back-to-back in a single night. By the end of the war, most of the “Night Witches” had around a thousand combat sorties under their belts.

PK Subban holding a dog

Welcome to Crazymeds, where you can learn what’s good, what’s bad, what’s interesting, and what’s plain weird and funny about the medications used to treat depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, migraines, anxiety, neuropathic pain, or whatever psychiatric and/or neurological condition you might have. The information on this site is to help you work with your doctor(s) to find the right treatment options. Too many of us get nothing more than 15-minute appointments with overworked doctors or nurse-practitioners, so we need all the help we can get. We need to talk to our prescribers about the best medication1 to treat our conditions, and not the most profitable ones, or the cheapest ones2.

OK, in reality “best” usually translates to “least bad.” If you know the name of the medication(s) you’re looking for, you’ll probably want our list of drugs by names and class/category. There’s also our much larger list of all the meds we know about to treat various conditions, including all the brand/trade names we can find for every med in every country in which each is available. We also have the drugs sorted into broad categories with lots of overlapping memberships:

Antidepressants, like Celexa and Effexor, for the treatment of depression (duh), anxiety, and other conditions.

Mood Stabilizers, such as Lamictal and Seroquel, for the treatment of bipolar disorder3.

Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), also known as anticonvulsants, which are used to treat one or more of epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and migraines. Depakote and Stavzor even have FDA approval to treat all three.

Antipsychotics, such as Invega and Abilify, to treat schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression.

Anxiolytics - in English: drugs to treat anxiety and the alphabet soup of anxiety spectrum disorders like GAD, PTSD and OCD. These are mostly SSRIs like Lexapro, benzodiazepines, and a few specifically non-benzodiazepine anxiolytic drugs like BuSpar.

Benzodiazepines like Valium (diazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam), which are used to treat anxiety, epilepsy, sleep disorders and more.

Medications for Headaches and Neuropathic Pain, which are primarily AEDs like Topamax and Neurontin, and some antidepressants, like Cymbalta. “Headache” usually, but does not always mean “migraine.” Like every condition discussed on this site, officially or unofficially, headaches are a spectrum disorder. Neuropathic pain is a catch-all term for specific conditions such as trigeminal neuralgia (sometimes misdiagnosed as migraines) to “chronic idiopathic pain” - which is doctorese for, “it may or may not be psychological in origin, but the pain is obviously real even if we don’t have a clue as to what’s causing it.”

Medications for Adult ADD/ADHD. Mostly stimulants like Adderall, but also non-stimulant medications like Strattera.

Medications for Sleep Disorders include stimulants, benzodiazepines, and non-benzodiazepine hypnotics like Ambien.

Stimulants, such as Adderall and Provigil (modafinil), to treat adult ADD/ADHD, sleep disorders like narcolepsy, and other conditions.

Crazymeds is the site for the obsessed and depressed, the manic and the panicked, the schizophrenic and epileptic, the migraineurs and bipolar, those with GAD, SAD, OCD, PTSD, in pain or have an otherwise non-standard brain4. If you have any specific questions about a drug that wasn’t answered on its page, couldn’t find the drug you’re interested in, or want some help in figuring out which medication is the right one for you, then visit Crazy Talk: Our forum for the mentally interesting. We aren’t doctors or anything, and we don’t diagnose, but we have more experience than we ever wanted when it comes to brain cooties and the crazy meds used to treat them. We’re all about helping each other know what the drugs can and cannot do, what they are likely to do for us and to us, and work with our doctors to make the best, or least bad, choice in medication(s) as quickly as possible.

Should You Be Taking Meds in the First Place? Crazymeds’ “Am I That Messed Up?” quiz.

Tips on How to Take Psychiatric/Neurological Drugs There’s more than “Don’t operate heavy machinery.”

Tips on How to Stop Taking Psychiatric/Neurological Drugs You don’t want to wind up crazier than you were to begin with.

Mixing Your Med Cocktail with Actual Cocktails You’re No Fun Anymore.

Common Side Effects No matter which one(s) you take, they will mess with your dreams. Other stuff will probably happen as well.

Meds with Fewer Side Effects than Most If you look at the PI sheets, even the placebo has side effects.

Dealing with Side Effects What you can do about common and most complained-about side effects.

The Differences Between Brand Name and Generic Medications Brand isn’t necessarily better, just different.

Pharmacology Basics An overview of how meds work for various brain cooties, and how most psychiatric and neurological conditions work to make our lives miserable.

Crazymeds’ Guide to Psychiatric Evaluations - A look at how the FDA & drug companies determine how effective medications are, and how doctors determine how crazy you are.

Meds & Supplements Do you need to take any? Are there any you shouldn’t take?

For real, CrazyMeds is one of the most helpful plain-english information sites regarding psychiatric / neurological drugs and what exactly they DO to your brain. If you’ve ever felt like a human lab experiment just being handed one prescription after another, CrazyMeds can help you understand what effects the drugs have and how they work. The site also discusses realistic side-effects such as the ever-present “head zaps” of SSRIs and others that doctors keep saying we make up for attention.

Please, please share this like wildfire.

My classmate, Susan Hess-Logeais, recently told me about the documentary she’s making called “Soar,” about two amazing young dancers, Kiera and Uriah. It’s incredible, and the young ladies featured in this are astounding, talented, dedicated and extremely important individuals.

Once I heard, I had to share it here. It’s the kind of thing that actually gets attention on tumblr when everybody else ignores it - ignores excellence in black girls, ignores disabled people, and lets them fall by the wayside. So I’m asking, please, please help these girls out, and if not, please reblog and share.

From the “Soar” press release:

"If you’ve ever seen Portland sisters Kiera Brinkley and Uriah Boyd dance together, you know they share a bond that goes beyond sisterhood. 18 year-old Uriah grew up helping Kiera, age 20, adapt after a childhood illness resulted in the amputation of Kiera’s hands and legs just one month after Uriah was born. “You really have to see them to believe it,” says filmmaker and dancer Susan Hess Logeais. “Kiera can move in ways that are incredibly powerful and graceful, and Uriah is an expressive and talented dancer on her own. But when you see the two of them dance together, you see everything: the struggle, the bond, the joy, the frustration, the mutual love. It’s truly overpowering to watch, and audiences respond pretty intensely.

Hess Logeais is currently fundraising to help pay for the event and finish her film, which she hopes will be eye-opening and inspiring. “We want to change people’s ideas about what is possible,” she says. “For all of us, but especially for the millions of people living with alternate abilities, Kiera shows us what happens when you challenge your limitations. That’s a message I would love to share with as many people as possible.” To find out more about “Soar,” the film, and see some powerful footage of the sisters’ dance, visit the Soar Kickstarter campaign. Kiera, Uriah and Susan are hoping that the disabled community will join the “Soar” community and support their efforts.”

"Soar" has a crowdfunding project going, but it’s having trouble reaching its goal - and this is just too important to let slip. Please help. Signal boost, share, donate if you can, but DO NOT let Kiera and Uriah be forgotten.

THE IMPORTANT LINKS:

The Website: http://soardocumentary.com/

Crowdfunding: http://www.seedandspark.com/studio/soar

YouTube: (watch these amazing dancers) https://www.youtube.com/user/hotflashfilmspdx

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/hotflashfilmspdx/videos