Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Sally Rooney on steroids

My drug regime is giving me delusional manias, one of which concerned the Irish novelist

GARY DOAK / Alamy Stock Photo 
issue 02 October 2021

To lessen the side effects of chemotherapy I am prescribed a corticosteroid. I take a whopping dose around the treatment dates and a maintenance dose the rest of the time. The physical side effects of prednisolone are sweating, insomnia, a gargantuan appetite and a moon face. The mental effects are similar to those of decent coke: an afflatus of delightedness and collected wits spoiled by an indiscriminating faith in the truth of my own thoughts, and an overwhelming and grandiose desire to express these marvellous thoughts verbally to other people.

Grandiosity in an invalid is not a good look. But people excuse it. Acquaintances who I haven’t seen for a while, but who have heard I’ve been up and down to Marseille for chemotherapy, are bemused by my cheerfulness and pedagogy. ‘Goodness, you look so happy and well!’ they say. ‘It’s only the steroids,’ I say. And we all laugh.

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