My life in a lunatic asylum

I can see why rock stars and other impetuous celebrity types accidentally top themselves with drug cocktails. When you are spaced out on medicaments it’s easy to forget what you have or haven’t taken. A month ago I was prescribed a dose of corticosteroids to see off a chest infection: 60mg a day for four days. Apparently, it’s a big dose. Nurse Catriona says it’s the largest she’s seen. (She was a practice nurse for donkey’s years.) For some folk corticosteroids have a similar effect on the mind as coke. Which means, in my case, I become chatty, overconfident and overassertive, occasionally tipping over into aggressiveness and paranoia. In his palmy student days, the oncologist told me, rubbing his hands together inside his groin and giggling like a girl, he and his classmates definitely noticed this effect.

From the village pharmacy I received a handsome box of the corticosteroid prednisolone in a hessian carrier bag.