What Are Your Reasons To Stay Alive?
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Reasons to Stay Alive
by Matt Haig
Page count: 264, Genre: Memoir, Self-help
If you want a book that is educative, eye-opening, entertaining, touching, inspiring, empowering, calming and humorous all at once, then this book is for you. Believe me, I’ll run out of adjectives to describe how amazing it is. It is different from (and probably better than) anything else I have ever read till now, probably because it has a multi-genre nature. Primarily it is a memoir in which the author has described his experience with depression, anxiety and panic attacks which he suffered from in his twenties and how he tackled them by virtue of good activities and people, without any medication. But at the same time, it is also a self-help book which can inspire the reader not only to get through life’s rock-bottom moments but also to understand and appreciate life in a great way. And it is also filled with some humorous punches in places. At points it is narrative, at others, it is philosophical, at others it is scientific, and at (some) others it is hilarious. The chapters are mixed up in such a way that one chapter might be about his experiences, while the next can be about some facts and statistics, the next can be a kind of journal entry the author has written for himself, and so on. The book comprises 5 sections: Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and Being; each one decomposed into many many small chapters. Entirely gripping and engrossing.
I read the book in two sittings and would have done it in one if it was not 2:15 am or if I did not have to attend a morning lecture in a few hours or if I was not slightly unwell the day I started reading which forced me to get some sleep. It can easily be read in one sitting. The writing is too good. Absolute page-turner. “Unputdownable” in the best sense of the word. And be sure to read the paperback. With its “lots of white spaces” and “small chapters” the words are almost comforting and calming to the mind. It almost felt like spending a couple of days with the author, with all his experiences, wisdom as well as compassion. Unbelievably open, honest, vulnerable and unfiltered words of empathy.
As a person who has been through multiple periods of existential dread at different points in my life, I resonated a lot with some parts of the book. My experiences were nothing close to what the author has described (I did not suffer from chronic anxiety/depression or panic disorders ever) but still somewhere deep within I could feel what he meant when he described his feelings of hopelessness or “being in a tunnel with no light at either end” or believing in the impossibility of being happy ever or the complete inability to envision a good future. Many people experience at least a little bit of such existential angst at some point in their lives. However, this book made me realise how serious mental health problems can get if they go unaddressed. Depression, as Matt says, is the deadliest disease on the planet, affecting 1 out of every 5 people at least once in their life.
The book also contains advice on how to combat mental health problems, what worked for him (reading, writing, yoga, meditation, running, talking, etc) as well as what made it worse (caffeine, alcohol, television, comparison, lack of sleep, etc). It turns out that science has not yet found a one-size-fits-all solution to depression and that something which works for someone may not work for others. However, there are some things which work more often than others and the author has been clear enough to explain all these nuances. For example, medicative pills did not work for him but they do for a lot of other people. The main takeaway (in case the reader wants a ‘takeaway’) is the advice on slowing down in life and having an attitude of acceptance of oneself and one’s feelings, in tune with Buddhist philosophy.
What I liked the most in this book:
- Small chapters, of different kinds
- Honesty and openness in writing
- Supporting arguments by statistics, facts and science
- Empathy, reflected in the writing, almost like talking to the reader
Who should read this book?
Well, everyone, but for want of specificity:
- Anyone combating (or having combated) a mental health problem or knowing someone who is (or was)
- Anyone wanting to learn about depression and/or anxiety so that they can be aware about what to do in case it happens to them or someone close in future
- Anyone feeling that their life is falling apart, or that it is going too fast, at a pace which they cannot cope with
- Anyone who considers mental health problems trivial or “just a part of life”
- Anyone taking life and well-being for granted
- Anyone wanting a book that can keep them up reading at night, not wanting to sleep :)
