Sometimes medication is what works, sometimes it’s not. Haig makes it clear what worked and didn’t work for him, and encourages readers to find out what works for their own brain. Some negative feedback on the book were directed at Haig’s uneasy feelings towards anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. “But rather than leave the mind entirely, words help us leave a mind, and give us the building blocks to build another one, similar but better, nearby to the old one but with firmer foundations, and very often a better view.” “If there is a way out, a way that isn’t death itself, then the exit route is through words,” Haig writes. To encourage his audience along this path, Haig includes a long list of fiction and non-fiction pieces of literature that helped him on his journey. Referencing the famous Sylvia Plath quote, “Is there no way out of the mind?” Haig responds that the way out for him included the world of literature. It’s about support systems, sunshine, rainy days, conversations, knowing yourself and your symptoms well. There are peaks and troughs, as Haig writes. But it is someone else’s story, and it reminds readers that mental health is as “down-to-earth” as it gets.

It is not revolutionary or earth shattering. This book draws you in with its easy-to-read, digestible chapters and the down-to-earth language that Haig uses when weaving sentences about tough subjects. The British author begins his tale by recounting his breakdown in Ibiza, Spain years before, and then leads readers through the arduous years of healing that follow.

“Where talk exists, so does hope,” Haig writes, and this has been my experience, too. He has found that writing and reading have been invaluable friends along his journey and he wants to pass the torch along.

It was, more importantly, the first time he had told his story about anxiety, depression, and a breakdown that had happened when he was 24 years old.įrom the first chapters of the book, we see why Haig is writing: because he believes sharing stories can be a method of healing for those that struggle with mental illness. Reasons to Stay Alive, published in 2015, was the author’s first dive into the realm of non-fiction. Reasons to Stay Alive immediately drew me in and kept me company during the dip down. As I was scouring library selections on mental health, Matt Haig’s memoir popped up and I gave it a try.

Some sudden life changes had caused a dip in my mental health, and so like a moth to a flame, I was drawn once again to literature that could stand by me in the valley. When I first read Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig, it was last year at the end of a long summer.

100 reasons to stay alive book