Marian Keyes has revealed she needs to be alone for 22 hours a day after perimenopause contributed to a bout of crippling depression that lasted five years between 2009 and 2014.
The author of the best-selling Again, Rachel, 60, from Ireland, shared that she copes with her post-depression by saying no to her plans and keeping her friendship circle smaller.
She said: ‘Now I say not much more because I have to. If I do too much I get nervous, like I’m dreaming and that’s always a sign.
‘Like I’m walking through a movie of my own life and that’s a real sign that I have to stop. I said I need to be alone for 22 hours a day (since perimenopause) and I pretty much do.’
But the 60-year-old told the Hay Literature Festival audience: “That feeling doesn’t go away when you start to feel normal after having been unwell.” The absolute pleasure of feeling normal is a gift that never fails to excite me.
Author Marian Keyes (pictured) has revealed she must be alone for 22 hours a day after perimenopause caused an intense bout of depression that lasted five years.
‘I feel enormous gratitude and appreciation when I do normal things like taking out the trash, it’s exciting! I say, “Wow, look you’re not afraid.”
The author of My Favorite Mistake, who has sold more than 35 million copies of her novels worldwide, also revealed that she no longer speaks to film producers about commissioning her books.
The Irish author has just signed a deal with Netflix for the adaptation of her 2020 novel, Grown Ups, which she will executive produce and insists she will have a cameo.
She said: “Never again will film people have a choice over my books.”
‘Occasionally I can have Zoom calls with said people, but I’m very spoiled about it, I won’t do it anymore because no one does anything.
“I’m wasting an hour and two quarters on a fucking Zoom call with some airhead in LA telling me how much they love me and then I never hear from them again.
‘I just won’t do it. But then during lockdown I had a Zoom call with these people about Grown Ups and I got really excited because they were the people who made Slow Horses.
‘I spoke to this incredibly down to earth Australian woman. She was nice about my book, but she wasn’t crazy and asked questions that showed she could have read it.
Marian added that she manages her well-being by saying no to plans and keeping her friendship group small (seen in 2022).
‘In January the word spread that it had been a ‘green light’, but that doesn’t mean anything, they are all liars. all me
“You can’t believe anything until you’re lying on the sofa with a box of Maltesers staring at it.”
It comes after Marian completed 30 years of abstinence. Revealing her milestone, she admitted that she “broke my heart to stop drinking,” but “if she had continued drinking, she would probably be dead by now.”
The broadcaster and author entered rehab for her alcoholism in January 1994, after a suicide attempt when she was 30, and has not drunk since.
In an Instagram post in January, the 60-year-old said: “When I realized the game was over with alcohol, I was devastated. “I didn’t think I was an alcoholic, I just thought life was hard, but when faced A life without her, I thought I’d be better off dead.
The author, who has sold more than 35 million copies of her novels worldwide, will turn her 2020 novel, Grown Ups, into a Netflix series.
‘As the seconds of my sober life began to add up, I discovered how wrong I had been about everything. I only started to truly live when I said goodbye to alcohol.’
Her post was inundated with comments from people including Elizabeth Day, who wrote How To Fail, and Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You, thanking and congratulating Ms Keyes.
Four months before he quit drinking, he wrote a story and sent it to a publisher on a whim. A year after leaving rehab, his first novel Watermelon was published.
Then, in 1997, Keyes released Rachel’s Holiday, about a woman in rehab, which sold more than 1.5 million copies.
She wrote on Instagram: ‘I’m very happy. I’m not trying to brag, I’m just telling anyone who is struggling that it is possible to do this one second at a time.