Bobbie Stephens-Wright reviews Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. Canongate (Edinburgh 2015). Pbk. 272 pages. £3.85.
I consider myself very fortunate recently, when on visiting a very small bookshop in Whitby North Yorkshire I came across this book. Perhaps it struck a chord at a particularly difficult and sad period. One might think that a book about depression would not be the requisite tonic but, in my case, it was exactly that. Someone with the courage to write about the very important subject of depression not just, as Matt Haig points out, ‘feeling a bit sad’. His use of language to describe the various manifestations of his condition was hilarious; I couldn’t put the book down and laughed out loud at his descriptions.
Many years ago I suffered a very severe bout of depression which later I would come across in many other people and describe it to them as ‘the dark night of the soul’. There was no doubt that the phrase conveyed rather well that I knew where they were in their tormented state, and that they could recover. I could empathise entirely with the inability to concentrate, the confusion, the fear of impending doom and the loss of meaning.
For sure, Haig is right to point out that at its worst you wish that you had any other affliction or physical pain for, just as the mind is infinite, so too are its torments infinite. Perhaps the positive outcome is that when it lifts, you realise that you are changed forever and that you wouldn’t wish the condition on your worst enemy.
It is good that Haig, an exceptional writer, already had an editor who would support the ‘genre straddling nature’ of the book. It is indeed a memoir of his battle with severe depression but can also serve as a self-help book or an overview. There are actually few self-help books that I would read or recommend but this little book has the power to give hope to so many people who have struggled through and grappled with depression.
Haig points out that our minds are unique and therefore go wrong in unique ways. He separates depression, anxiety and the feature of agoraphobia, while noting that these three can all appear at one time as features of this debilitating illness. Haig adds to this panic disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), while noting that all of these features can be experienced in different ways.
There are few sufferers who have not contemplated suicide, and of course, Haig is yet another. He makes the important point that depression is invisible, that even the most intense emotions carrying on relentlessly inside cannot be seen from the outside. This is not just a matter of wacky moments, it is a very real and terrifying illness. One feels as though no-one else in the world can possibly have endured and re-emerged from the painful sensations that mark profound depression, and such was the experience of Haig.
Haig’s recovery was not through pills or any other medical intervention although he is not anti-pills entirely, remarking that he knows that for some people pills can work. However, after some disorientating diazepam panic attacks, Haig decided that pills were not the answer for him. He feels that having experienced his pain without any form of ‘anaesthetic’ he became alert to the subtle upward or downward shifts in his mind. Haig notes that the things that really made him feel better were exercise, sunshine, sleep and intense conversation etc. He suggests that the alertness to his condition would have been entirely lost if he had taken pills.
To use Haig’s own words this book attempts to tackle depression and anxiety head-on. He discovered that depression lied to him about the future, which prompted him to write about his experience. He believes that the oldest clichés remain the truest. Time heals. The tunnel does have a light at the end of it even if we can’t see it.
Haig’s words have given me hope and I have no doubt that they have inspired others. He is rather fond of straightforward lists, such as lists of things that have made him feel better and things that have made him feel worse. Reasons to stay alive. I could have negotiated the book without recourse to the lists. Nevertheless I would commend it to anyone who has suffered depression or anyone who has supported a loved one suffering from depression.
Bobbie Stephens-Wright is a long-time member of SOF. She is currently working on prison reform. She lives in Morpeth, Northumberland.