The Life Of Bryony - “I Knew I Wouldn’t Get Through It”: Matt Haig on Depression, Undiagnosed ADHD and Learning to Build Resilience

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

This week, I’m joined by Matt Haig – bestselling author, mental health advocate, and the man whose books have quietly sat on so many of our bedside tables, getting us through the dark nights. Matt’s new novel, The Midnight Train, returns to the universe of The Midnight Library and asks what happens when we stop chasing “what if” and start making peace with the life we’ve actually lived. We talk about depression, suicide, and what it really feels like to be trapped in your own mind – and why survival, not tragedy, is now the story we should tell about mental illness. Matt opens up about late-diagnosed autism and ADHD, agoraphobia, shame, and shoplifting, and how all of it somehow turned him into a writer. We also explore why books are still the bravest kind of media, how travel helped his recovery, and why he now dreams of opening a bookshop. If you’ve ever felt like the odd one out, like you’re “too much” or “not enough”, this conversation will make you feel a little more seen – and a little less alone.BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODEMatt’s new book, The Midnight Train, is available to buy from 21st May.WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOUGot something to share? Message us on @lifeofbryonypod on Instagram.If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xxCREDITS:Host: Bryony GordonGuest: Matt HaigProducer: Laura Elwood-Craig Assistant Producer: Tippi Willard Studio Manager: Mitchell LiasProduction Manager: Vittoria CecchiniEditor: Rowan JacobsExec Producer: Jamie East A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now, have I got a treat for you, lovely listeners of The Life of Briney? We've only gone and got the multi-million selling author Matt Haig on the show. Matt's work has helped millions of us feel less alone in our darkest moments, myself included. And his honesty about mental health has genuinely changed how we talk about anxiety, depression and being human. And today on The Life of Briney, we're talking to him about his new book from the Midnight Library universe, The Midnight Train. We're always chasing away from our own thoughts. But I feel like books are one of the last spaces where allow us to be brave and calm and sit with ourselves and our own feelings. And we try as much as possible to run away from that.

So books, I think, are still the bravest kind of media out there. My conversation with Matt coming up right after this. Matt Hague, welcome for the second time to the life of Brieney. It's so good to be back, Brianie. It's so good to see you as ever. When I received a copy of the Midnight Train through the Post a month ago, I actually shrieked out loud upon opening it. I can't imagine that because you're so sort of introverted and like, as a person, quiet.

Yeah, I'm not very enthusiastic about things. No, you're very understated. I got really excited. And then my daughter, who turned 13 last week, she got really excited. Oh, really? That's cool. Because over the summer holidays, she read the Midnight Library,

and she loved it. Really? Yeah. I think actually... I love that, like at that age. You know, I love it crossing over that sort of into the kids' books. What I try and do, actually, when I'm writing for grown-ups

is to actually write a children's book for grown-ups. I feel like to try and write that child because I feel like when you're a child, you read so purely. You do everything so purely, don't you? Because you're a kid. But, you know, you don't have that pretentiousness yet. That's sort of like,

and the books carry such sort of like pretentiousness and sort of baggage words and what they mean and what they look like on your bookshelves. And kids just read because they... They want to. They want to. I mean, like the story. And there's no sort of like highbrow or lowbrow or class connotation to it.

You just read. So, Matt, you are, you have this incredible ability to impart wisdom through storytelling. So you go on these journeys with you, literally in this case. Yeah, trained you. And then you sort of feel like you're learning about life in the process. And the Midnight Library, which sold, how many copies? 12 million copies. It sold 12 million copies.

So, you know, I don't know if it could be making it up. It could be more now. So the chances are that you have read the Midnight Library. And if not the Midnight Library, then another one of Matt's books. The one that got me started on the Matt Haig train was reasons to stay alive. And it was like, I've always said this and I think I've mentioned it quite a lot in interviews myself that, you know,

when you go to a hotel room and there's always a copy of the Bible in the desk drawer, you know, I feel like for me, there should always be a copy of reasons to stay alive. Oh, that's very sweet if you to say. It's so weird thinking about reasons stay alive because I obviously wrote that a long time ago. And like, looking back now,

I would write that so differently. I'm glad it exists as it is because I'd probably worse if I wrote it now but I didn't know a lot about myself when I wrote that I didn't know I was neurodiverse I hadn't ever had therapy when I wrote reasons to stay alive

apart from like talking to people on hotlines or talking to the GP I hadn't had any official therapy which sounded mad because it was still a good nearly well over 10 years since my breakdown at that point I'd gone through agoraphobia, depression, panic disorder,

sort of elements of OCD, yeah, not being able to leave a house. Not, you know, it possibly, absolutely disabling me in the sense that I couldn't go out and get a normal job, stuff like that, but I'd never sort of therapy. I'd never been offered it. When I was really ill, we didn't have a money to go private. And my, I had, I had, a very bad experience with two doctors,

which stopped me getting help. Like the GP in my mum and dad's town, I was back living with my mum and dad. The GP, I remember, I was getting sort of a bit of warning signs about this GP because she had all these sort of like, she wouldn't treat women who are seeking an abortion. She had this long list of people,

and she was very religious. red flags lots of red flags on the door I remember this vividly even though it was so many years ago because it was a massive thing to leave the house because I was agoraphobic

so I'd gone for about three consecutive panic attacks to get there real panic attacks not just whittling about something actual physical panic attacks and then I got there and she asked if I'd ever taken

recreational drugs and I'd been in Abifa for three years at the end of the 90s so you know I had taken recreational drugs. And after that point, she was just so dismissive and it was so sort of blammy. And, you know, she didn't want anything to do with it and didn't offer me any help. And before that, I'd been given by in the Spanish hospital. After my suicide attempts,

I'd been given sort of industrial strength, diazepam, which hadn't helped me in that state. So together, that's sort of combined into a sort of phobia against medicine, getting help, you know, combined with my agoraphobia and, you know, belief, and I felt worse that day, I'd felt worse on my diabetes, so I thought, I'm not going to try and get help. It's annoying looking back, because there would have been something for me, therapy or pills or combination thereof, but I never pursued it to find out what would work for me. So I went the very long, hard way. The only silver lining of that is that. is that when I got better, it did enable me to sort of write things like reasons to stay alive

because I'd had to work out my own way. I'd had to work out my own kind of therapy for myself, my own sort of CBT-esque way of getting through it by myself. It was like inventing the wheel. It was just I knew nothing about depression. I knew nothing about mental illness. I think the big thing, and I know we, you and me to a degree a part of it, this thing called the mental health conversation, whatever that is,

this sort of public conversation around mental health. There's a lot of cynicism around it, especially now it's centred in the sort of celebrity world and everyone sort of comes on to podcasts like this and talks about their mental health. But one thing I think is truly great about. this thing called the mental conversation is we have examples of people who've gone through it. Like when I, in 1999, in 2000, when I was ill, the only mental illness to me was death because it was Kurt Cobain, it was Ernest Hemingway, it was Sylvia Plath, it was suicides,

it was tragedy, whereas now you think of mental illness, you think of survival. Yeah. You think of overcoming things. And that's because of people talking about it. Yes, it can be annoying sometimes, yes, it can seem like, you know, someone's, you know, out on the circuit and they're talking about mental health, but it's so much better than what it was, where it was just you only, you know, it's become a thing that's been normalized to a degree. Yes, there's aspects of it. Yes, there's still conditions with massive amounts of stigma. Yes, people still have the same amounts of self stigma. But depression no longer is just a story of suicide. Yeah, and that actually is incredibly powerful in itself, isn't it?

Thinking back to when I was very unwell with OCD in the 90s, I didn't know anything. Like there was nothing. There was only kind of jokey kind of depictions of OCD. And now there are umpteen different, you know, I just have to go on Instagram. Just a moniker from Friends thing, wasn't it? It was just tidy cupboards. Yeah, or Jack Nicholson in as good as it gets, you know. That was the other one.

But actually, that brings us to the midnight train because the main character in that, Wilbur, there are bits where the crisis years, the crisis years, where he doesn't, obviously, when you're in the crisis, you don't know if you're going to get through it, do you? No. No, definitely.

And, like, for me, when I was in an even bigger crisis, I suppose from well, but when I was literally at that point of like, um, suicide, I knew I wouldn't get through it. Like that's what people don't understand. It's not just even a thought. People always wonder,

with suicide, you know, there's still that stigma attached about selfishness, about how, how could they do it if they had someone, if they had a partner, parents, friends, kids.

And I just think that's still a misunderstanding of what that state feels like it's like it can be like being trapped in a burning building and the people in that burning building don't have a death wish they're just choosing one horrendous fate over an even more horrendous fate and it can feel like you're in a trapped in a burning building of yourself you don't know how to get out of it you can't take another minute of it and people don't understand like mental pain can be infinite. And if someone's in that state,

they tend to be at that moment. And so, yeah, it's incredibly hard. And we've all, like, every book I've written, and like, including Midnight Train, I'm always just sort of reminding myself about how much a person can change. in the space of a lifetime and a situation. I mean, one criticism I get, I mean, there's a lot of fair criticisms I get about my books,

but one criticism I got specifically about the midnight library was that it was too easy. It was like this suicidal character, Nora, they thought that she basically was depressed, took some pills, went to bed, had a dream, and then realized actually her life wasn't so bad, which is not what the Midnight Library is, because the Midnight Library is a science fiction book.

One thing, Nora doesn't have clinical depression, she doesn't have the sort of depression I had. She has situational depression to do with various things happening in her life. And also, she literally goes through those other lives. she tries out other lives and yes eventually she changes her perspective but bloody hell

you have to believe you can change your perspective that's what therapy's bore that's what therapy is you know you're literally changing your view of your life and I try to present therapy in book form

in both these midnight books and yeah and it strangely these well I don't know about the reaction to midnight train but midnight library certainly was so polarising I think because of that because it's around the sort of most painful aspects of people life

so people's reactions to mental health to therapy to everything if they've got bad response to that then they kick against it and you know so it really works for some people and really does I had a bit about the reason to stay alive as well but I feel like you have to be truthful, especially with this topic, you owe it to be truthful to your own experience to help people who are in your situation. You can't help everybody.

But yeah, I remember wishing there had been books, films, TV that captured what I was feeling. And there wasn't really, like not that long ago. It seems strange because there's a lot of that stuff now. The Midnight Library, so it's about a character who is, she's getting a different perspective on a life she hasn't yet lived, I guess. So it's about all of the things she can be if she just keeps going, you know, all these different worlds that she may end up, you know, all these paths she may take. The Midnight Train is different in that it is asking you to look back on life already lived and find the meaning. in that. And while I was reading it,

I was thinking that we really do now, don't we, live in a culture of more, an improvement. And what's next? What's next? You know, we're always thinking about the next thing, right?

And there is very little living in what we actually have right now. We're living in fear. I think that is. It's a kind of like culture, very much predicated on fear. And you need to keep going because you need to make the money

and then you won't be able to do this and da-da-da-da-da and you know it's like you race away with it and and this book is sort of saying what if you just for a moment kind of realize what we all have right now yeah in the moment so I can predict the negative response will be

oh it's all right for him to say or you know what I mean it's like oh well you know he sold 12 million copies whatever it is you're in a relationship it's all right you yeah whatever And that's fair enough. But, you know, absolutely, I think there's a massive problem in our... We've got all kinds of problems, obviously, in society,

and I won't address all of them, and I'm not experts in all of them. But one thing I thought a lot about in my life is that inability, how we're so discouraged, especially in the West, to be even vaguely happy or mindful of what we have. we're always taught to lack. There's whole industries predicated on us lacking stuff. If we were happy with everything, we wouldn't want to buy things. We're in a consumer economy.

We're in a kind of like, we're consuming ourselves at this point. We're consuming, we're branding ourselves. We're everyone, whether you've got like 100 followers, or, you know, bazillions of followers. We're all branding ourselves. We're presenting ourselves. We're having experiences,

and then we're packaging them and putting them up, and there's always this sort of distance. And we're so encouraged to move the goalposts always, to not be happy. You've got whole sort of like $30 billion beauty industries. Obviously, that's been long in place for women, but increasingly say for men and in terms of your protein

and your creatine and your gym memberships and everything else and body dysmorphia and I think we're only at, you know, in terms of obviously, you know, it's hard for men to get sympathy for this when women have struggled

with this for generations to generations, but I feel like there's another sort of time bomb of young men and body image about to happen as well. And famously my gender's a little. little bit worse at talking openly and articulately about about this stuff and so we've got all kinds of

issues and we're all kind of in this collective insanity where we're told you know you can't have like flaws you can't you just see people increasingly with better tea you know the episode of friends in the 90s where Ross Geller had the bright white teeth and that was hilarious Now, now that is literally the norm, everywhere. Yeah, yeah. Every single way you go. So you just, you had your normal teeth and you were happy with them in the 90s

because Roskell about silly. Now you're literally the only person who doesn't have those bright white teeth. Actually, I'm not, can I just see your teeth for a second? I don't have bright white teeth. No, I don't. And I'm drinking black coffee, so. Yeah, what is life if we can't drink black coffee?

No, I mean, I've exactly. Like my, I'm trying to make my brand based around imperfection and flaws and failing. So, you know, it would kind of be wrong to sort of like iron out every. Yeah. But, you know, this thing about like looks, you know, is, again, there's been less pressure on men. But like men still feel it. I feel like we don't talk about it much. But I can remember being a kid and hating my face, really hating my face.

to the extent I'd self-harm. Really? Mm-hmm. In what way would you, can you talk about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I wrote about it a little bit in reasons of their life. But, yeah, just see if you stuff. Like, I was at school, I was at a new school, and I hated it.

Miss girl didn't want to sit next to me because she said, oh, you've got moles on your face. And then so I went home and I got a toothbrush and tried to create a scar in place of a mole on my face. and in Samoa I can't even see in those photos about time and it's just like but in my head that became everything and it was just so awkward and I had a yellow jacket and I got called Banana Man

and I could have... Sorry, I don't need to re-tramatize you. It's funny. It's all comedy but it's all like kind of like black comedy because I was just so out of place and this is what I felt all my life and it's passed down from my mum who was literally out of place because she was adopted, never knew her parents,

never knew what class she was, always became overtly, stereotypically middle class, but with a sort of insecurity to it, but all the trappings, theatre, radio for, you know, book clubs, middle class. But never really knowing where she fit in. And I had, I think because my mum was sort of like, post-natal depression with me, very insecure when I was little, very insecure when my sister was little. I just had that sort of sense passed down and it wasn't my mum's fault. It was just the contact she was in.

That sense of not knowing my place, not helped by the fact that my dad was quite posh. From my world growing up, my dad was like one of the poshest people I knew because I'd grew up in this working class town but my dad had gone to boarding school had gone to Oxford but it dropped out of Oxford because he'd had a breakdown and he was doing something he didn't want to do and he changed to do something he did want to do which was architecture at Sheffield but I had this very strange and all my friends were kind of like their dads just were sort of like you know bus drivers worked in factories and I'm stuff like that so I was always like didn't know where I fit in and and so I was

downwardly mobile so I was never wanting to aspire away from my friends I wanted to sort of like you know be be show them that I wasn't this sort of like academicly aspiring person so I'd be the shoplifter I'd be the class clown I'd take my friend friends back home on a lunch hour. This is as teenagers, when we're getting a bit older, I would go, I lived quite close to school. So I'd be like the Willy Wonka of alcohol with my parents' drinks cabinet. Right. So we'd actually go, you know, so we'd be semi-drunk for our afternoon history class. Yeah, that's so naughty.

I was, yeah. And I had, but we were, It was rave era as well, so there were drugs in the mix, and I was quite a delinquent. I got arrested for shoplifting at the age of, well, I must have still been 50. It was young enough for my mum to have had to be involved and come to the police station, and I was in a police cell for two hours, and my mum came, and she was, yeah, furious. But that fury saved me from getting a official. Criminal record. Criminal record, so it's just got a caution.

So you're a raving? Yeah, but also, but that's like one side of it. I was also bookish. I went to the library. My parents were both back home late. I went from a life. I just didn't know. And the thing is with shoplifting,

what is shoplifting, the superpower of shoplifting is being invisible. And so I just felt like I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to sort of like fade away. I had no confidence. I had no aspiration. I was told by about half my teachers that I was special needs but I wasn't told what the special or the needs meant. Right. Okay. So special needs was just like you were stigmatized. So you just felt other? Yeah. I mean I was autistic but I didn't know it. But you didn't know that until quite recently. I didn't know until my 40s. So I was autistic but autism meant race.

man so no one was autistic you know as a school of 500 people who wasn't a single ADHD officially recognized person autistic person even a mentally ill person yeah we were just you know normal hiding in plain sight hiding in plain sight yeah and so I was I was definitely not destined to succeed teachers definitely didn't think I was destined to succeed I scraped through GCCC's I got an I mean I'm now really into science but I got an F in science GCSE but that was because I was an hour and a half late

for the exam and I just sort of walked in and have forgotten so I wasn't thinking... Do you think that if you'd had an ADHD diagnosis back then then maybe... Yeah a lot. You might not have been an hour and a half late for the exam. Allowances might have been made. That was definitely yeah

and this is what I really bloody hate this line that we have law and culture about over diagnosis. Yeah, it's fucking annoying. It's really annoying to see the health secretary, the Labor Party, subscribing to it as well. I think, I don't even know if there's any sort of belief behind it. It's just this idea that they feel like they have to pander to this imagined public that apparently think there's an overdiagnosis. But I don't, I think, I think a lot of people know that's not the case anymore. I'm, yes, there's a certain generation of my parents' generation that struggle with it.

But that's understandable because if they feel towards the end of their life that they've had something that, you know, they've never known about. It's bittersweet at our age, but it becomes a bit more of a tragedy at that age because, you know, what can you do? Well, it's a life unlived. Yeah, it's a life unlived, exactly. whereas in our kind of I'm a bit old of new but at our kind of like age it's it's like action stations isn't it's like okay what we're going to do about this and you know sort it out

and get a little bit radical with it because you feel like yeah there was this lost kid who was me who would not have been so lost I would not have been treated that way if we'd have had a more sympathetic thing. You look at, you know, everything that any government wants to sort out, like crime rates, basic things, whatever it is, social upheaval, discord. You go into any prison. They've done lots of vast, extensive proper studies, none of which I can cite by name or remember properly. But the percentages are like...

We know this to be the case. That's definitely over 20% of undiagnosed ADHD in prison populations, way more than in, you know, at least four times what normal life, where you'll find ADHD. And it's people's brains being wired wrong. So instead of bashing these square pegs into the roundholds and sort of breaking people in a broken society, why not just sort of, you know, create a system where, yes, okay, there's some misdiagnosed people

out there, but there isn't physical health. You know, guess what? You know, people, I can think of about at least three relatives whose cancer wasn't recognized or was diagnosed as something else. You know, there's misdiagnosis everywhere. Why do we just focus when there's a misdiagnosis of mental stuff? Yeah. Okay, so ever, as ever, when I read, your books and when we have these conversations, there are kind of lines in them that I highlight and then quote back to you to just help, just to kind of, because they stand out to me and they're like, these are the pearls of wisdom. And the one that I like about Wilbur, who clearly a little bit based on your dad? Yeah, but it's a love story really. Wilbur and Maggie are sort of

My mom and dad, yeah. Are they? Kind of. I love that. I mean, they were, yeah, in Sheffield. I've never seen Sheffield portrayed as a setting for sort of a romantic historical novel. So, I did Sheffield. Sheffield is a very underrated city, I feel.

We always talk about northern cities, creating great culture. You know, Sheffield, you've got Arctic monkeys, you've got pulp, you've got Human League, you've got Heaven 17, you've got self-esteem, you've got everyone's. Everyone's from Sheffield. The Midnight Train is set in both in many places but Sheffield and Venice. Yeah. The two cities of love.

Yeah. In both countries. Exactly. I was in there. I was actually in Seoul recently which is I'm not just showing off. Well my daughter's just massive on K-pop K-everything and Asia

everything. and my son's massively into Asia. So they've been campaigning for ages to go on a big Asian adventure. And before the book tour, I just wanted to get far, far away. So, yeah, we went on a little tour around Asia. But I was in Seoul and I thought, it's good.

It's almost Sheffield. Is there going to be a book set in soul? No, because I felt like it, I loved being there, but I didn't understand any of it. And, like, to the extent that I didn't understand the bearings and the Satnav wouldn't work. properly and then I downloaded the Korean app and did not.

Even though it had an English function, I did not understand the thing. And South Korea, like, even though a lot of our pop culture comes from South Korea, it's incredible how far away you still feel when you're in South Korea and how they don't, compared to the rest of Asia, English proficiency isn't that that strong, apart from the younger people. They don't need to because they've made themselves the centre of the universe, I have and that's what I felt like it would sound like we were like super privileged growing up and we really weren't but we did go to America because my uncle was a hippie who'd gone to America because he'd taken loads of LSD and decided he wanted to move to California with flowers and his hair at the end of the 60s. Anyway, I went to America when I was younger at 1983 and my parents were broke throughout the 80s because they paid for it.

holiday but I felt like that was the center of the universe now I don't get that feeling in America but if you're in parts of Asia specifically like Tokyo or Seoul you think this is not far anything this is the center we're the far west and that this is where it's going on you really get that sense that the energy's there anyway sorry that was a very hypercaffeinated ADHD answer I'm pretty sure you might be ADHD but I mean I'm based solely on why unprofessional analysis from that last well I yeah I could probably get a diagnosis for ADHD you're not meant to do that you're not meant to diagnose this afternoon yeah but anyway sorry to me honest I could do with being just carted off to to to a to

some sort of retreat just lie down and stare at stare at the sky for a month yeah yeah but I feel like we all need that don't we in the modern age. Yeah. I just feel like one thing that having a diagnosis of autism and ADHD help me with was things that I used to think about myself that were rude but necessary. I can now explain to people why I do them. For instance, like at Christmas and you've got a lot of extended family around you

or you're in any social situation where there's more than say three, four people. I find it hard. I love this. I love just chatting one to one. I like deep chats. I can cope with a small room of people,

but big room. I think it's partly stimulation of lots of noise and stuff. I would always make an excuse to leave for about 10 minutes and then come back. So you'd even pretend to go to the loo or you'd just sort of step outside or whatever.

and it would be seen as rude, I think. And now I can just say, I'm just sort of processing and having ended it. And I never realized what I had to do it. I used to feel so weird. And it's so nice to not feel weird, but to feel autistic rather than just feel like weirdo. And to have the framework and the understanding

and to be able to say to people, this is what it is. Yeah. So they don't take it personally. Exactly. I was going to ask you if you had a midnight train

or you had some sort of because the midnight train is the thing that comes for Wilbur, the protagonist of your book when he dies. But it's different for everyone in the midnight universe. What would it be for you? It wouldn't be a car because I can't drive.

Yeah, I love, neither can I. You can't drive. No, never have a car. lesson. Oh, I have had lessons. I've had three separate bouts of learning to drive. And I each single time. You make it sound like an illness. I've had three separate bouts of learning to drive. It felt like one. And it probably gave my instructors them, but I got to lesson six every single time. So that was my limit. And it's like the equivalent with real jobs, because I've had some real jobs in my earlier years and it was always three weeks. I lasted three weeks. I didn't never,

I often never got to payday and I would just walk out after three weeks. So I have a limit and it's same with driving and I just I have a limit and then I stop and I couldn't cope with the pressure of the lessons and also I think I'd be a terrible driver. I just don't want the responsibility of driving with my brain which is like can switch off and imagine something. or think about something and like I'll go into a trance and so you don't want that on the roads I think some of us are supposed to drive and some of us are supposed to be driven well yeah or some of us are supposed to just like get the choose get the really crap train from Brighton okay so what would your what would what would you what would what would your what would be a train which is

why I wrote the midnight train but if it wasn't a train I mean a gondola would be nice A gondola would be lovely. Someone's singing. A gondola. I don't know. I mean, I love travel. It's my one sort of like indulgence. I do like aeroplanes actually.

I know a lot of people don't like aeroplanes and it's a bit unethical, isn't it? But if we're going for a fantasy, it doesn't. It could be a very eco-friendly airplane. Yeah. turning left yeah yeah i love i love travel and i really associate travel for me with recovery yes because i used to be agoraphobic so i literally couldn't leave a house can go to the corner shop so for me every time i'm abroad it's just like or even every time i'm not home it just reminds me that i'm not however bad i'm feeling i'm not stuck inside yeah and but yeah i yeah so your midnight vehicle is

going to be an eco-friendly aeroplane? Well, no, it probably would be a train, but that's boring, isn't it? I was going to ask you where the train would stop for you, but I feel like we've stopped actually, you've already answered that question by you've stopped at certain... Well, wouldn't everyone be stopping mainly at childhood? Because doesn't everything really, everything even our ambitions and insecurities it all happens before 16 really doesn't it most of it I mean most mental health conditions are recognised by 14 aren't we yeah and I think I had a lot of unrecognised stuff young and I still think I'm solving my childhood trying to get some self-esteem

back from childhood. The writer Graham Green said that the best thing you can have to be a writer is a miserable childhood because that is the bank you were drawing on forever so it might make you an unhappy human but it makes you a better writer

but you constantly I had lots of happy times but I remember the happy times because they felt rarer than the other times I mean, school wasn't happy generally for me. I moved school a lot. My parents took me out of school when I was 10 because I wasn't fitting in.

But again, we didn't know why I wasn't fitting in. I often had friends, like I'd have one close friend, and it wasn't that bad, but I just really struggled. I know everyone used to sort of like come in from school, lie on the bed and feel knackard, but I'd just like not be able to get up. I've been so exhausted from a day of kind of masking or trying to fit in with lads I didn't really have much in common with. And I mean, in my cat, the people I was with, like in secondary school ended up with very different lives to me, joined the army, some ended up in prison. And it was quite macho and I wasn't very macho at all.

I mean, I was naughty, but not in a macho kind of fighting kind of way. So I never, I struggled with being the right sort of boy. And, you know, it's very like bookish, not in a goody-to-shoe's way. I just genuinely like reading like Stephen King novels and just being quiet, sitting on a bench with a book, which marks you as a bit of a target, I suppose. but I wasn't like majorly bullied. You know, childhood's complicated.

You know, I had some good friends. I was quite tall and relatively strong. And, you know, I wasn't really bully material. I just had this inner feeling of feeling like I didn't fit. And I always had it. And it's so weird, you know. Do you still have it now? Yeah.

I have it even, like, I have it even more like now. I feel like even it's weird and I definitely don't want any sympathy for this because it's all my own making and all my own wanting you know like you know even becoming a writer and doing that it's kind of like kind of it's a separation kind of job like it's one that literally takes you away and into yourself so like now at this point in life I'm craving sort of like real world things like setting up a bookshop or you know doing something out there do you think that's what you're going to do yeah I mean this is our slow plan we just this last weekend had some bad news that this place we wanted in Brighton which was going to be in this great centre of the lanes in Brighton has fallen through because there's a big brand come in with a very slick application. We did a really shoddy

application while we're on holiday. So understandable. But we're going to keep looking in London and Bryson. Yeah, we want to do something. I want to give back a bit. Yeah, and like, you know, give back, you know, it's very, you feel quite selfish being a writer when it's just

you yourself and you're promoting yourself. It's not healthy. You know this. It's not healthy. You're eating yourself. You're eating yourself and you sit and then you go, I've eaten myself. Will you all please tell me that you like me you like what i've eaten that you like that i've destroyed myself and then maybe they don't and you get fed up at a point i'll be halfway for a book tour and i'll just never want to see

my own name face hear my own voice ever again you know you start hate it hate this like matt hague person hate the sound of my voice everyone says my voice well i'm on a podcast now so everyone says the sound i mean i think alan rickman's got a great voice but people say i sound a bit like i listen I love the sound of your voice, Matt. But I sound like a British villain, I think. I don't think you sound like a British villain. I think you sound like you, Matt. And that's what people want to hear.

I'm letting all my insecurities out today. I don't know why. I love that you are. And I think that's why people love you. And that's why you've got nearly like a million followers on Instagram. I'm trying to lose followers on Instagram because that's another thing that's not good for you, having lots of followers. I used to think having not many followers made me feel insecure.

but that's actually preferable to have a lot. So I'm trying, I could obviously just set up a new account, but I want to keep the people who genuinely care and want to. But I've got a lot of people, I think, I think also on Instagram, there's a lot of Shard and Freud are going on. It's quieter, but there's a lot of like, I see it as like car crash followers. People are just waiting for the next breakdown or, you know,

wanting the bad news. And so it's like, what does it really? mean like Instagram followers nowadays it doesn't matter I'm also quite I think I've lost the knack of social media because it's changing so quick isn't it it's all video and I used to be good when it was just words I like that I was a good sort of like Facebook uncle you still are good and that's why we need you and we need you more than ever on social media oh that's that's I I I like being like stubbornly old-fashioned and just writing my non-aesthetically pleasing text rants about stuff and almost as a text I think it's quite it's quite good for the brain isn't it

to have something that takes more than three seconds to read so I'm doing it as a sort of mindfulness exercise for people that's what I'll say we love it yeah I want to talk to you about the darkness that chases Wilbur. Right, yes. But then, but how you maybe stave off the darkness that chases you. Absolutely.

And maybe we can talk about that in our bonus episode, The Life of You, and you can talk about the things that keep you, keep you out of reach of the darkness. Or maybe, maybe, Matt,

that just comfort you when you let the darkness catch you. Yes, that's very profound. Well, the thing is, Brian, I'm still scared of a, I'm still scared of a literal dark. I don't like going to bet. This is why mobile phones are so bad, because you can stay awake and just stare at light and be distracted to one in the morning, can't you? And we're always chasing away from our own thoughts.

But I feel like books are one of the last spaces where allow us to be brave and calm and sit with ourselves. Even if we're reading someone else's story, we're sort of finding out about ourselves. own feelings and we try as much as possible to run away from that so books I think are still the bravest kind of media out there and yeah I do run away from things but I also know that I have to sort of sit with myself and just sort of accept myself as I am because that was what got me into trouble when I was younger always running into brick walls. Thank you for sit. Thank you. Can I just say something. I'm going to say something else profound to end this podcast.

Thank you for sitting with yourself here today on the life of Briney. And yeah, and sharing yourself with me. It's just I love listening to you. I love reading you. And I can't wait for everyone to read The Midnight Train. And I can't wait for you to write another book. Like every time you write a book, I go, woohoo! And that was the woo-hoo that I let out when I received this book in the post. Yeah. Well, I'll take about 10 years on my next one because, yeah, that one, yeah, it took a lot out of me. But, yeah, I hope people enjoy it.

But anyway, I really enjoyed this today, Brian. I always enjoy talking to you. Thank you, Matt Haig. Thank you, legend. Oh, thanks, Brian. You legend, too. Thank you, Matt, for such a generous and dangerous and deeply reassuring conversation. I know many of you will feel seen and soothed by the way he talks

about his mind. I'd love to know what resonated with you. Come and tell me over on Instagram at at Life of Briney Pod. Matt's book The Midnight Train is out on the 21st of May and are able to pre-order now and he will be back on Friday for our special episode, The Life of You. In the meantime, don't forget to subscribe, follow, rate and rave about us to all of your friends, but most of all, keep being you. I'll see you next time. I'm going to be.