Reasons To Stay Alive
At twenty-four, Matt Haig's life fell apart. Gripped by severe depression and anxiety, he stood on a cliff's edge and could see no way to keep living. Reasons to Stay Alive is his honest, moving account of that crisis and the long, non-linear climb out of it — how he survived, how he slowly learned to live again, and what helped along the way.
Moving between his younger self in the depths of illness and his present self looking back, Haig writes plainly about what depression and panic actually feel like from the inside, the clumsiness and stigma that surround mental illness, and the small, ordinary things — love, books, walking, time — that gradually became lifelines. He is careful never to promise easy answers, but insistent on one point: that even the oldest cliché is true, and there is light at the end of the tunnel.
A number-one bestseller that has resonated with millions of readers, Haig's memoir is a warm, clear-eyed companion for anyone living with depression or anxiety, or trying to understand a loved one who is.
The book was adapted into a theatrical production featuring music and movement, which was imagined for the stage by Jonathan Watkins. While there have been reports of development for a television series, no screen adaptation has been released.
The author has noted that his novel The Humans was the first of his works to obliquely acknowledge his personal struggles with depression, an experience he later explored in much greater depth within this memoir. Additionally, the title of his later novel How to Stop Time was derived from a concept discussed in this book.
The memoir was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and received the 2016 Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for Non-Fiction.