EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle. 

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

Sarah Perry

When author Sarah Perry found herself being prescribed powerful opiates to deal with pain, she found they had a major impact on her.

(The Guardian, approx 12 mins reading time)

In the autumn of 2016, my body weakened by chronic illness, a disc ruptured in my lower spine. My left leg, oblivious to signals from a compressed nerve, weakened and dragged, and my foot burned as if I’d stood in the sun at noon. The pain was considerable, but tolerable. Some months later, the disc ruptured again. In my MRI scan, white streaks of muscle wastage framed the black pulp of leaking disc matter, which was pushing at the sciatic nerve like a cellist’s finger on a string. Seeing it, the inscrutable doctor softened. You must be in torment, he said. How would I rate my pain, from one to 10? He looked at me. I was beyond speaking. Ten, he said. Ten. He made a note.

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