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| Categories | Death & Grief |
| Author | Matt Haig |
| Publisher | Penguin Life; Reprint edition (February 23, 2016) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 272 pages |
| Item Weight | 2.31 pounds |
| Dimensions |
0.8 x 5 x 6.9 inches |
I. Book introduction
Reasons to Stay Alive is a novel and memoir written by novelist Matt Haig. It is based on his experiences of living with depression and anxiety disorder, which he suffered from the age of 24. It is Matt Haig’s first nonfiction piece and the first time he wrote about his illness publicly.
Summary
One day, in September of 1999, Matt Haig felt that his old self had died. He was 24 at the time, and with little or no understanding of depression, or awareness of it. The impression of a dark cloud that poured endless rain over him made him feel ‘caved in’, with no way of escaping. He was scared because he did not know what was going on inside his mind.
After three days with no sleep and food, he could no longer withstand the pain he was feeling. Everything he felt, everything he saw only made him more and more depressed. He felt that living brought too much pain, and the only way not to feel the pain was to end his life.
He got to the edge of a cliff, and was one step away from ending all his pain and suffering. Standing on the edge of the cliff, he thought of all the people who loved him, and he thought of death. He tried to gather up the courage to end everything once and for all, but he was too afraid, thinking that if he survived he might remain paralyzed, trapped in his body forever. He figured that to survive such tragedy would only bring more suffering; and so those thoughts restrained him from him ending his life.
From that point on, even though he was still very ill, in a very small part of him he found the strength to try and fight the illness, and not let himself be consumed by it. After the near-suicide episode he spent the next three years battling his depression.
Matt then goes on to narrate how he learned to examine himself, how he accepted and ‘befriended’ his depression, where instead of him being part of his depression, depression was a part of him, and he had control over it. He recounts how through reading and learning about depression from others who have suffered from it, by writing, and the encouragement from his family and his girlfriend Andrea, he was able to conquer the illness. Eventually, he learned to appreciate life and all the things we take for granted.
Reasons to Stay Alive intends for readers to never lose sight of faith and support. Matt encourages to enjoy the little joys and moments of happiness that life brings, and tells that there are still opportunities to remain alive. Matt Haig tries to convince readers that time can heal, that at the end of it all, there is light at the end of the tunnel, even if it can’t be seen.
Editorial Reviews
- “Destined to become a modern classic.” —Entertainment Weekly
- “An in-depth exploration of Haig’s battle with depression, if you need a pick-me-up on a very fundamental level, you could do a lot worse than this book.” ―PEOPLE
- “I dog-eared 45 pages in Haig’s compact book where he wrote profound or poignant things. I could have easily marked more of them.” ―Jim Higgings, THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
- “Wonderful and essential.” ―Christopher Weir, THE HUFFINGTON POST
- “A quick, witty and at times profound take on an illness many people suffer from, but sometimes can’t bring themselves to talk about.” ―THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE
- “Things just got real. His honest — and surprisingly funny — first person account is a reminder that no matter how hopeless life may seem, it really never is.” ―NY METRO
- “A scintillating read.” ―THE DAILY MAIL
- “REASONS TO STAY ALIVE is essential reading for anyone who has dealt with depression and for anyone who loves someone with the disease.” ―BOOK REPORTER
- “Fascinating and beautifully written.” ―IAN RANKIN
- “Brings a difficult and sensitive subject out of the darkness and into the light.” ―MICHAEL PALIN
- “Matt Haig is astounding.” ―STEPHEN FRY
- “Maybe the most important book I’ve read this year.” ―SIMON MAYO
- “A life-saving book.” ―AMANDA CRAIG
- “Matt Haig uses words like a tin-opener. We are the tin.” ―JEANETTE WINTERSON
- “Thoughtful, honest and incredibly insightful.” ―JENNY COLGAN
- “Brilliant and salutary . . . should be on prescription.” ―REV. RICHARD COLES
- “A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.” ―KIRKUS REVIEW
- “Warm and engaging, and shot through with humour…a valuable contribution to the conversation.” ―THE SUNDAY TIMES
About the Author (Matt Haig)
Matt Haig is an author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It is being made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. His novels for adults include the award-winning How To Stop Time, The Radleys, The Humans and the number one bestseller The Midnight Library.
Matt Haig was born on 3 July 1975 in Sheffield. He grew up in the Nottinghamshire town of Newark and later went on to study English and History at the University of Hull.
As of 2015, Haig is married to Andrea Semple, and they live in Brighton, Sussex, with their two children and a dog. The children were homeschooled.
Haig identifies as an atheist. He has said that books are his one true faith, and the library is his church.
Some of Haig’s work — especially part of the non-fiction books — is inspired by the mental breakdown he suffered from when he was 24-years-old. He still occasionally suffers from anxiety. He has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism.
II. Reviewer: Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
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1. HATTIE reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
I won this proof on twitter from Matt and though I don’t often review books here, I thought that probably I owed him that. Not just for giving me a free copy, but for writing the book in the first place.
Let me be honest, I started reading this and thought “This book isn’t written for me”. But then I thought “There are people I would like to read this, because it feels so familiar to me.” I would like to give it to people who are close to people with depression and anxiety, but don’t really understand it. I would like every depressed person to have an unlimited supply of copies to hand out to anyone who tells them to pull themselves together. I would like to just leave it on tube seats and cafe tables because I just think, if a few more people could understand how depression and anxiety felt, then maybe the world would be better.
And then I think it became a book for me. Because if you’ve ever felt otherwise, it’s always good to collect more reasons to stay alive. More ways to stay alive. Because there will come a time again when you need them.
So I think, maybe, this is a book for everyone. Required reading.
2. THOMAS reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
“Now, listen. If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain. To escape a mind on fire, where thoughts blaze and smoke like old possessions lost to arson. To be normal.”
A meaningful book about depression, anxiety, and creating reasons to stay alive. Like a modern day William Styron, Matt Haig shares his experience with depression and anxiety and how he fought to overcome suicidal thinking. He discloses how his mental illness has affected his work, his relationships, and his perception of life overall. The greatest part: he frames his mental illness not as a weakness or a strength, but just as another part of himself, a facet that provides both pros and cons as all traits do. Another great quote from the same page as the first one in this review:
“But actually, it wasn’t easy. The weird thing about depression is that, even though you might have more suicidal thoughts, the fear of death remains the same. The only difference is that the pain of life has rapidly increased. So when you hear about someone killing themselves it’s important to know that death wasn’t any less scary for them. It wasn’t a ‘choice’ in the moral sense. To be moralistic about it is to misunderstand.”
I loved the insight Haig shared about depression. His view on resisting medication while seeking treatment resonated with me: of course you would use medication if you have to, but you can also learn to breathe on your own – depending on your condition – without the influence of pharmaceutical companies. I also appreciated his emphasis on mindfulness and breathing. We live in such a fast-paced world that feelings of aloneness and worry about emails, meetings, and deadlines seem natural. Haig encourages us to take a step back and give ourselves time for self-care.
Though I enjoyed Reasons to Stay Alive, I wanted more in certain areas. The short length of each chapter made the book easy to get through, but that same brevity prevented more thorough and developed trains of thought/arguments. From a memoir perspective, I also desired more of a consistent narrative, as I felt that the book jumped from idea to idea a lot. Still, I would recommend Reasons to Stay Alive, in particular to those interested in mental illness who have not already read too much about it. A final, hopeful quote:
“I stood there for a while. Summoning the courage to die, and then summoning the courage to live. To be. Not to be. Right there, death was so close. An ounce more terror and the scales would have tipped. There may be a universe in which I took that step but it isn’t this one.”
3. WHITNEY ATKINSON reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
4.5 stars
If you’re easily triggered by descriptions of other people’s mental illnesses, I would advice against reading this during low points. There’s some very in-depth descriptions of his dark thoughts and the panic and depression he felt, and it was really uncomfortable to confront. I think the title misled me because I picked this book up on a bad night hoping it would be uplifting, but I almost immediately had to put it back down when I realized it wasn’t going to help at all, just add to my spiraling. So definitely pick this up when you feel emotionally stable enough to confront very real descriptions of mental illness.
Matt talks several times about how he doesn’t take medication and it scares him and he doesn’t want to, which is a personal choice and that’s fine, but there are so many people that do take meds and it works for them, and if I would have read this before getting on my anxiety medication, it probably would have scared me away from it even further than I already was.
The way that Matt phrased a lot of things was just spot-on. I don’t suffer from depression, but when my anxiety is bad, it can be debilitating. I related to all his descriptions of the fear and the agoraphobia and almost everything else he touched on. Parts of this book were so powerful they brought tears to my eyes. He truly is a brilliantly talented writer, and i’m tempted to pick up some of his other books just because he had that much of a knack with words. But more than that, he just put the experience of living with debilitating mental illness into words. There were a few “solutions” to anxiety that I disagreed with (such as his telling the audience to avoid distractions because they’re unhealthy, when I use distractions almost every day as a coping mechanism), but overall, I did tab several parts of this book to return to in the future.
4. NAT K reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
5**** plus.
”You are going to go mad. Like Van Gogh. You might cut off your ear.”
Whether you have a large black dog lumbering behind you, or a playful puppy bounding by you side, your mental health is one of your greatest assets. It is more delicate than the most intricate Swiss watch. We often don’t think of it too much, until things go skewiff. It’s something we take for granted, like the sun rising and setting.
”Life is hard. It may be beautiful and wonderful, but it is also hard. The way people seem to cope is by not thinking about it too much. But some people are not going to be able to do that. And besides, it is the human condition. We think therefore we are.”
I adore Matt Haig’s writing. He is empathetic. He doesn’t preach. He is real. And he’s darn amusing (whether intentional throughout this book or not…I guess that’s where the phrase “black humour” comes from).
There are so many “ah-ha” moments in the book, that I could relate to. From minor niggles to major problems, Matt Haig discusses the insidiousness of mental health. How because it can’t be seen, it can be difficult to diagnose the fine line of having “one of those days” to actually having deeper issues which need resolving.
”I just sat there looking at the pink blossom and the branches. Wishing my thoughts could float away from my head as easily as the blossom floated from the tree. I started to cry. In public. Wishing I was a cherry tree.”
A fabulous book. It spoke to me on so many levels. It had my mind racing in a thousand different directions reading it. And it brought a lump to my throat more than once. This is more profound than most of the “esteemed” self-help books out there.
I’ll end this review with some more words from Matt Haig about depression, which are utterly beautiful.
”It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky.
You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.”
Here’s to wellness – mind, body & soul 🍃
5. WDDT reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
It’s me. Is it you too?
I have never read a book that I felt I’d worn for my entire life. I slid into Reasons to Stay Alive and it turned out that it has not only been my clothing, but all my organs and central nervous system and everything I’ve breathed since at least 1968. It is me. Reading it was wonderful, sad and joyful and amazing and I felt myself on every page — until I turned the page to arrive at the section beginning on page 198. I literally whispered to myself “Holy Crap. This really IS me.”
The book was written by Matt Haig and it’s basically his stories and thoughts about Depression and Anxiety. And oh, that sounds so sad and, well, depressing — but this isn’t. It’s written in sections and lists and pages and many wonderfully-succinct bits that capture his life and how it carefully unfolded. And no, it doesn’t have a sad ending.
For me, it’s a masterpiece. I started re-reading it the day after I finished it. And, surprisingly I just realized that I never cried reading it. Not once. I didn’t have to — all the emotions I felt were there, right in front of me, on the page.
6. SUSTAINABLE reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
A Generous Gift to Readers
Never was there a more apt title. Haig is his most authentic here, using the generous act of writing for an audience he may never meet in person, to help save their lives by making what saved him both accessible and unpretentious. Unlike his literary precursors in this genre, like Styron’s _Darkness Visible_, Haig knows his topic is urgent and therefore requires short chapters of intense mood-altering perspectives that spark immediate change rather than slow, contemplative reflection, which is typically unavailable to the Suffering. Thank you, Matt Haig, for your writerly generosity on this one.
7. ALDA reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
Not a five-star book this time, but IMHO everyone should read it
This book wants to do a lot of things, and because Matt is such a great writer (How to Stop Time and The Humans are 5-star books, in my opinion), Reasons to Stay Alive succeeds at being a compulsively readable packet that’s part memoir and self-help book, and part a survey of the most common experiences with depression and anxiety. It also serves as an introduction to other great books out there on depression and anxiety, as well as to great literature (by Graham Greene, for instance) which can fortify the spirit as it looks for a way out of these debilitating conditions.
At the same time, the book is plainly about a very lucky person, who had the unwavering support of a dedicated partner as well as both parents. A lucky person who gets to have two children with his spouse, when so many other people battling depression are struggling to go through life mostly alone, with the help of a good friend at the most. But that doesn’t take away from the core of this book, which allows people with depression to see more ways to look at their life, even as it may be much different from the author’s, and people in general to learn about what depression and anxiety can do to a person, and how it may be overcome in some cases.
This book is a little gem. It would be a five-star book but it’s fragmented to the point where observations don’t feel substantial enough. I would have liked his mind to burrow deeper into those observations.
That said, I will recommend this book to other people, as, indeed, I will anything by Matt Haig. I rate his novels five stars.
8. A BREWER MOM reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
A breath of fresh air sounds formulaic when reviewing art but it fits Reasons to Stay Alive. The title made me bristle a little. I mean I’m slogging through life to be strong enough to keep my beautiful, talented 20 year old daughter alive in this world she finds cruel. That is all a depressed mother needs for a reason. But then thinking about how her writing is probably the biggest thing that keeps my daughter alive and fighting humbled me and I wanted to know a different writers perspective.
I don’t know how this ended up on my kindle or when I placed it there but I read it over a few hours several months into my daughters latest depressive episode. This has been a real bad one and although we are still in the pit or as she calls it ‘the horrors’ things are lifting a bit. I opened up Reasons to Stay Alive kind of by accident. While reading this I felt that hopefulness that comes sometimes that is so hard to quantify. I also have depression and soldier on because I am tough and I am a mother. I am my daughters rock. I really have no idea what she would do without me. But now I recognize other reasons to stay alive.
I feel like I’m going to reread this quite a lot. I thank the author and the universe which placed the book in front of me this week.
9. JOANNE HARRIS reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
I received an ARC of this book from Canongate. My usual technique, when reading an ARC, is to read 5 pages, then take a view as to whether I’m going to actually read the book. With REASONS TO STAY ALIVE, I’d passed the 50-page mark before I remembered to take a view, and by then I was down the rabbit-hole. Matt Haig is a marvellous writer: limpid; tender; passionate. In this memoir (and it’s short, barely 200 pages long), he manages to articulate, both the bleakness of depression and the means of dealing with it, little by little, day by day, without ever sounding maudlin, or self-indulgent, or preachy. For everyone who has ever felt the snap of the black dog’s teeth, this book is wise, funny, affirming and redemptive. Sometimes depression can be like falling into a wordless pit. Matt Haig finds the words. And he says them for all of us.
10. BHARATH reviews Reasons to Stay Alive
I came across many references to this book and have wanted to read it since some time. This is the story of how Matt Haig fought depression. The book is extremely important – it deals with the topic of mental health which needs more attention, and his personal account is very well written and inspiring.
Matt is unable to reason how and why it happened, but he slips into a very deep depression. His self-esteem is dented severely, and he develops extreme anxiety – so much so that even walking to the store and buying something is unbearable. The descriptions of what he goes through are vivid and moving. At one point, he is only seconds away from taking his life. His girlfriend (and later wife) Andrea sticks by him as a pillar of support, and so do his parents. Drugs do not help, and it is only when he develops a high degree of self-awareness (as outlined on Eastern philosophy which is now the cornerstone of most mindfulness teachings) that his mental state improves.
As he points out, many people face depression and suicide takes so many lives every year. More men than women end their lives, though more women suffer from depression (while he does speculate on this in the book, there are good pointers on why this is case in the philosophies of Carl Jung & mythology commentaries of Joseph Campbell). Mental health is a critical subject and various simple habits you can easily inculcate can help.
It is not that he offers revolutionary new advice – however, it is simple, sensible and comes out of a very traumatic personal experience.
A book I strongly recommend. I hope to read more of his work shortly.
III. Reasons to Stay Alive Quotes by Matt Haig
The best book quotes from Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
“The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe’s worth of darkness.”
“If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain.”
“Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with.”
“One cliché attached to bookish people is that they are lonely, but for me books were my way out of being lonely. If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.”
“You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.”
“How to stop time: kiss.
How to travel in time: read.
How to escape time: music.
How to feel time: write.
How to release time: breathe.”“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
“Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind.”
“There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.”
“And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.”
“You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a baby’s face as she lies asleep in your lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you haven’t tried yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the likelihood of dying from falling. There are books you haven’t read yet that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late-night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.”
“To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.”
“There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself.”
“Depression is also smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky but – if that is the metaphor – you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can’t exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.”
“I am you and you are me. We are alone, but not alone. We are trapped by time, but also infinite. Made of flesh, but also stars.”
“The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don’t become them. Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person. You can walk through a storm and feel the wind but you know you are not the wind.”
“Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.”
“Once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
“Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.”
“What doesn’t kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn’t kill you can leave you limping for the rest of your days. What doesn’t kill you can make you scared to leave your house, or even your bedroom, and have you trembling, or mumbling incoherently, or leaning with your head on a window pane, wishing you could return to the time before the thing that didn’t kill you.”
“I want life. I want to read it and write it and feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt.”
“People with mental illnesses aren’t wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can’t be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.”
“Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax.”
“I wanted to be dead. No. That’s not quite right. I didn’t want to be dead, I just didn’t want to be alive.”
“Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say, don’t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.”
“When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps.”
“MINDS ARE UNIQUE. They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people’s, but it is never exactly the same experience.”
“There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don’t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.”
“Talk. Listen. Encourage talking. Encourage listening. Keep adding to the conversation. Stay on the lookout for those wanting to join in the conversation. Keep reiterating, again and again, that depression is not something you ‘admit to’, it is not something you have to blush about, it is a human experience.”
“Read a book without thinking about finishing it. Just read it. Enjoy every word, sentence, and paragraph. Don’t wish for it to end, or for it to never end.”
“An annoying thing about depression is that thinking about life is inevitable. Depression makes thinkers out of all of us.”
“That’s the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything. So if it catches you smiling, even fake smiling, then – well, that stuff’s just not allowed and you know it, so here comes ten tons of counterbalance.”
“Hate is a pointless emotion to have inside you. It is like eating a scorpion to punish it for stinging you.”
Excerpted from Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
This book is impossible
Thirteen years ago I knew this couldn’t happen. I was going to die, you see. Or go mad.
There was no way I would still be here. Sometimes I doubted I would even make the next ten minutes. And the idea that I would be well enough and confident enough to write about it in this way would have been just far too much to believe.
One of the key symptoms of depression is to see no hope. No future. Far from the tunnel having light at the end of it, it seems like it is blocked at both ends, and you are inside it. So if I could have only known the future, that there would be one far brighter than anything I’d experienced, then one end of that tunnel would have been blown to pieces, and I could have faced the light. So the fact that this book exists is proof that depression lies. Depression makes you think things that are wrong.
But depression itself isn’t a lie. It is the most real thing I’ve ever experienced. Of course, it is invisible.
To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames. And so—as depression is largely unseen and mysterious—it is easy for stigma to survive. Stigma is partic-ularly cruel for depressives, because stigma affects thoughts and depression is a disease of thoughts.
When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalize every-thing, and you are so scared that people will alienate you further you clam up and don’t speak about it, which is a shame, as speaking about it helps. Words—spoken or written—are what connect us to the world, and so speaking about it to people, and writing about this stuff, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves.
I know, I know, we are humans. We are a clandestine species. Unlike other animals we wear clothes and do our procreating behind closed doors. And we are ashamed when things go wrong with us. But we’ll grow out of this, and the way we’ll do it is by speaking about it. And maybe even through reading and writing about it.
I believe that. Because it was, in part, through reading and writing that I found a kind of salvation from the dark. Ever since I realized that depression lied about the future I have wanted to write a book about my experience, to tackle depression and anxiety head-on. So this book seeks to do two things. To lessen that stigma, and—the possibly more quixotic ambition—to try and actually convince people that the bottom of the valley never provides the clearest view. I wrote this because the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The tunnel does have light at the end of it, even if we aren’t able to see it. And there’s a two-for-one offer on clouds and silver linings. Words, just sometimes, can set you free.
A note, before we get fully underway
Minds ar e unique. They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people’s, but it is never exactly the same experience. Um -brella labels like “depression” (and “anxiety” and “panic disorder” and “OCD”) are useful, but only if we appreciate that people do not all have the same precise experience of such things.
Depression looks different to everyone. Pain is felt in different ways, to different degrees, and provokes different responses. That said, if books had to replicate our exact experience of the world to be useful, the only books worth reading would be written by ourselves.
There is no right or wrong way to have depression, or to have a panic attack, or to feel suicidal. These things just are. Misery, like yoga, is not a competitive sport.But I have found over the years that by reading about other people who have suffered, survived, and overcome despair, I have felt comforted. It has given me hope. I hope this book can do the same.
1
Falling
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.—Albert Camus, A Happy Death
The day I died
i can remember the day the old me died.
It started with a thought. Something was going wrong. That was the start. Before I realized what it was. And then, a second or so later, there was a strange sensation inside my head. Some biological activity in the rear of my skull, not far above my neck. The cerebellum. A pulsing or intense flickering, as though a butterfly was trapped inside, combined with a tingling sensation. I did not yet know of the strange physical effects depression and anxiety would create. I just thought I was about to die. And then my heart started to go. And then I started to go. I sank, fast, falling into a new claustrophobic and suffocating reality. And it would be way over a year before I would feel anything like even half-normal again.
Up until that point I’d had no real understanding or awareness of depression, except that I knew my mum had suffered from it for a little while after I was born, and that my great-grandmother on my father’s side had ended up committing suicide. So I suppose there had been a family history, but it hadn’t been a history I’d thought about much.
Anyway, I was twenty-four years old. I was living in Spain—in one of the more sedate and beautiful corners of the island of Ibiza. It was September. Within a fortnight, I would have to return to London, and reality. After six years of student life and summer jobs. I had put off being an adult for as long as I could, and it had loomed like a cloud. A cloud that was now breaking and raining down on me.
The weirdest thing about a mind is that you can have the most intense things going on in there but no one else can see them. The world shrugs. Your pupils might dilate. You may sound incoherent. Your skin might shine with sweat. And there was no way anyone seeing me in that villa could have known what I was feeling, no way they could have appreciated the strange hell I was living through, or why death seemed such a phenomenally good idea.
I stayed in bed for three days. But I didn’t sleep. My girl-friend Andrea came in with water at regular intervals, or fruit, which I could hardly eat.
The window was open to let fresh air in, but the room was still and hot. I can remember being stunned that I was still alive. I know that sounds melodramatic, but depression and panic only give you melodramatic thoughts to play with. Anyway, there was no relief. I wanted to be dead. No. That’s not quite right. I didn’t want to be dead. I just didn’t want to be alive. Death was something that scared me. And death only happens to people who have been living. There were infinitely more people who had never been alive. I wanted to be one of those people. That old classic wish. To never have been born. To have been one of the three hundred million sperm that hadn’t made it.
(What a gift it was to be normal! We’re all walking on these unseen tightropes when really we could slip at any second and come face to face with all the existential horrors that only lie dormant in our minds.)
There was nothing much in this room. There was a bed with a white patternless duvet, and there were white walls. There might have been a picture on the wall but I don’t think so. I certainly can’t remember one. There was a book by the bed. I picked it up once and put it back down. I couldn’t focus for as much as a second. There was no way I could express fully this experience in words, because it was beyond words. Literally, I couldn’t speak about it prop-erly. Words seemed trivial next to this pain.
I remembered worrying about my younger sister, Phoebe. She was in Australia. I worried that she, my closest genetic match, would feel like this. I wanted to speak to her but knew I couldn’t. When we were little, at home in Nottinghamshire, we had developed a bedtime communication system of knocking on the wall between our rooms. I now knocked on the mattress, imagining she could hear me all the way through the world.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
I didn’t have terms like “depression” or “panic disorder” in my head. In my laughable naivete I did not really think that what I was experiencing was something that other people had ever felt. Because it was so alien to me I thought it had to be alien to the species.
“Andrea, I’m scared.”
“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.”
“What’s happening to me?”
“I don’t know. But it’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t understand how this can be happening.”
….
Note: Above are quotes and excerpts from the book “Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig”. If you find it interesting and useful, don’t forget to buy paper books to support the Author and Publisher!
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