A reason to be cheerful: Matt Haig's new book shows how life perks up in the end 

  • At 24 Matt Haig's life changed when he developed clinical depression
  • In his book he shares his first-hand account of the brutal sickness
  • Suicide kills more people than stomach and breast cancers or Alzheimer’s

REASONS TO STAY ALIVE

by Matt Haig

(Canongate £9.99)

Matt Haig was working in Ibiza with his girlfriend Andrea when his life suddenly changed.

At 24, he was a self- confessed party animal who drank too much, while eating and sleeping too little.

One day he felt his brain flickering and tingling inside his head and he became overwhelmed by a feeling of intense panic as well as the desire to end his life.

Matt Haig's first-hand account of the brutal sickness is a scintillating read

Matt Haig's first-hand account of the brutal sickness is a scintillating read

‘To escape a mind on fire, where thoughts blaze and smoke like old possessions lost to arson.’

He walked to a cliff edge, looked at the Mediterranean and thought: ‘A single step — versus the pain of being alive.’

From time to time most people will moan that they feel ‘depressed’. The word is easy to reach for when feeling vaguely down or perhaps when we’ve become sad for a very good reason — such as a recent bereavement or the loss of a job.

Or when the stress of work or moving house is so great that you can’t sleep — or get up in the morning. Yet real clinical depression should not be confused with such other faces of gloom.

In this short, scintillating, first-hand account of depression and how he combated it, novelist Haig leaves us in no doubt as to the true, terrifying nature of the beast.

Writing 13 years after suddenly being struck down by ‘a new claustrophobic and suffering reality’, Haig provides enough detail about the symptoms of depression to deter anyone from taking the name of this cruel condition in vain.

Sadness is not a sickness — but depression most certainly is. Suicide kills more people than stomach cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, colon cancer, breast cancer or Alzheimer’s, according to World Health Organisation figures.

Haig takes this a step further: ‘As people who kill themselves are, more often than not, depressives, depression is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet.

‘It kills more people than most other forms of violence — warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime — put together.’

Again and again he finds fresh ways of letting the reader know exactly how bad depression is: ‘At its worst you find yourself wishing, desperately, for any other affliction, and physical pain, because the mind is infinite, and its torments — when they happen — can be equally infinite.’

One of his most valuable points he makes is that depression can strike down any sort of person.

Haig is highly educated, comes from a very happy background, has devoted parents and was already lucky enough to be in a stable relationship with the wonderful Andrea that has proved a lifesaver.

He wants us to understand that (a) depression is widespread and (b) anyone can be struck down.

‘Millionaires, people with good hair, happily married people . . . people who exude happiness in their status updates, who seem, from the outside, to have no reason to be miserable.’

Haig gives plenty of ‘reasons to stay alive’. He comes up with two brilliantly creative sections, which take the form of a dialogue across time between the depressed Matt ‘then’ and the recovered (or perhaps I should say, recovering) Matt ‘now.’

So when the old self asks for a reason to go on living, the new self replies: ‘On the other side of this there is life. L-I-F-E. You understand? And there will be stuff you enjoy.’

The point is that someone like me can say things like that, but someone suffering from depression can easily retort: ‘You don’t know because you haven’t been there!’

When Haig focuses on his Reasons To Stay Alive on page 117, his ten clear points are all the more moving because you know this knowledge is hard won.

In case depressives think they are alone, he tells them robustly there are millions like them, and even gives a list of 39 famous ones, including Winston Churchill.

Haig’s story of recovery will encourage anyone who feels miserable, whether they are clinically depressed or not, and offers valuable insights to family and friends, too.

I love the essential wisdom of this: ‘You know, before the age of 24 I hadn’t known how bad things could feel, but I hadn’t realised how good they could feel either . . . it is quite therapeutic to know that pleasure doesn’t just help compensate for pain, it can actually grow out of it.’

Now there is nothing at all original in the suggestion that pain does pass and that you can learn from it. But it certainly needs repeating — again and again and again.


 

 

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