Reasons to Stay Alive opens Goodreads in a new tab

My thoughts

5/5stars THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. FINALLY A BOOK that doesn't try to paint a flowery picture, or makes us believe it all gets better in the end or tries to mask pain in humour. This is just a very real, very raw picture of what mental health struggles are like. And no this is not a guidebook to how to cope with depression 101, this might not even add anything substantial to what we already know. But this is the kind of book you want to turn to on one of your low days and just sit there and nod in agreement as the author goes on to describe how on some days it's so difficult to even go the supermarket to buy milk. Again, this is not a self-help book, this reads more like a memoir so if you're going into this thinking you might get some extra knowledge about this battle with depression or how to cope, you'd be disappointed. But if you want to read the experiences of someone who is going through exactly what you're going through, this is the one. Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind. CWs for the book: Detailed discussions surrounding anxiety and depression And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.