“I promise I’m not actually drunk.”

A lot of us have said something along those lines before, and it’s usually a lie. It’s usually when you’re about to text someone just an hour ago you declared to your friends you’d never speak to again, or when you’re running around in just a t-shirt at 4pm after sleeping for five hours trying to convince your friends to let you drive 162 kilometres on your own. In my more recent paraphrasing of this seemingly universal utterance, it was the case that I laughed for a good five minutes about a dog’s name. Now, to be fair, I find pets with common and almost middle-aged-human-like names such as Susan or Jonathan wildly amusing at life’s most sober moments. So I was thrilled when the Pet of the Week’s name was Karen.

Although looking back, doubling over in laughter perhaps was a bit of overkill. There was a point my diaphragm decided that expressing my amusement over said name was more important and drawing air into my lungs (it was an executive decision on their part – I like to think the board would have never allowed such measure). I had to explain to my perplexed, and, let’s face it, somewhat concerned colleagues that I had not in fact down several jugs at lunchtime, but I was merely low on iron.

We all know a thing or two about iron – it keeps our houses dry, it flattens crinkles in our clothes, and it helps us play. But surprisingly, it’s Rodd and Todd Flanders who have the most scientific and medical definition. Except, replace “play” with “function as a proper adult who doesn’t hunch over with a blank stare, grinning at the corner like they’ve just had a piece of brain removed via their nostril”. Yes. Iron helps me to do those things.

Without enough of it, things start to get weird. Namely me. I get weird. For one, my spelling is even less up to scratch than usual. I also don’t do the gramma very well. I also discover that my decision-making skills take a massive dive, and I find myself watching re-runs of The Nanny until midnight when I’m already exhausted. As such, this can make getting through a day at work tricky. It’s very hard to appear professional when you’re giving the stink eye to inanimate objects.

But as someone who has been hit with the low iron stick a couple of times, I have learned to recognise when I need meat. Only last night I found myself licking a plate that was resting an under-cooked piece of steak before I threw it back in the pan. Yep, I literally drank blood. This is usually a fairly subtle sign that something must be done.

This isn’t something completely foreign to me, having grown up with a mother who nibbles at the spaghetti bolognaise while she’s making it, before the sauce tomato paste is added, before the onions are thrown in and before the saucepan hits the hotplate. Essentially, the woman eats raw mince. She also picks at everyone’s leftover barbecue scraps. On more than one occasion I have caught her literally gnawing on a sheep’s leg bone (granted, it had been cooked in a hygienic setting before, but it was no less Neanderthal-like).

When things get hectic, I need a steak like a Year 3 teacher needs a coffee after the spending the night making paper mâché angel wings before a full day of dress rehearsals for the upcoming Christmas play. In fact, my local butcher could tell when I was having a rough day, because she would instinctively get ready to bag me a large piece of porterhouse when I’d drag my slouched, shivering body into her doors. This is because the signs of a borderline anaemia are clear as day – light-headedness, fatigue, decreased ability function coherently

So next time you see me holding on to light post for balance looking at a post box like it just called me the b-word shouting about why that Jeep ad is what’s wrong with Australia (that family doesn’t need a bigger effing boat, the one they have now is fine and greed is what put the world into such financial trouble not so long ago damn it!), please ignore the overpowering scent of goon wafting around me, and hand me a rack of ribs.