“I Was So Fucking Messed Up”: Chet Faker Opens Up About Dealing With Long COVID
"I could not have played music. I had a hard time choosing what to eat."
Following the release of his new album, Hotel Surrender, Nick Murphy — the artist better known as Chet Faker — has revealed that he suffered for months from the effects of long covid.
The singer dropped the news during a chat with triple j’s Richard Kingsmill. He explained that he was initially “sick in bed” for three days, recuperating in his New York apartment, and although he was “confident” about his ability to defeat the illness, three months later he started to experience the symptoms of “long covid.”
Long covid is the term used to describe those who experience symptoms of the illness many months after first being infected. The symptoms vary from case to case, with the most common including mental health issues, persistent breathlessness, generalised pain and “mental impairment.” It’s been estimated that tens of thousands are fighting the illness, with many stating they have a “lessened quality of life”.
The worst symptom of the illness for Murphy was the “brain fog”.
“I thought brain fog was when you wake up in the morning, ‘oh, I need my coffee,'” he explained to Kingsmill. “It’s not like that at all… It’s more like you know you’re awake but every time you try to think something smacks the thought out of the way.
“I remember standing in my kitchen for like 15 minutes, trying to figure out if I was going to sit down or what I was doing. It was really hectic. I wasn’t scared by the physical sickness…But it never occurred to me that it would mess with my brain…I could not have played music. I had a hard time choosing what to eat.”
Luckily, Murphy has since overcome the illness by getting the vaccine.
“An article said something like 40 percent of people with long COVID had said that the vaccine had helped with their symptoms,” he said. “By that point I was so fucking messed up; I hadn’t done anything in three months, I went and sat in the park every single day. I was so not good. So once I read that, I’m like, ‘Alright! I’m going to get the vaccine.”
Thank goodness for that.
The new Chet Faker album, Hotel Surrender, is out now.