The Life Of Bryony - The Life of You – Matt Haig on Structure, Sobriety and the People Who Saved Him

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Matt Haig is back for this bonus episode! After our main conversation about The Midnight Train and his mental health journey, I wanted to dig into the three things he actually leans on when his brain wants to sprint off in twelve different directions at once. Matt talks honestly about addiction, breakdown and why undiagnosed ADHD made his life feel like constant self-sabotage. He shares how the “boring” stuff – sleep, routine and structure – became his first line of defence, why sobriety turned out to be the most exhilarating decision of his life, and how love, friendship and family stopped him disappearing into the darkness. If your mind feels messy, addictive or out of control, this episode is a reminder that you don’t need perfect habits – just a few non-negotiables that help you keep going.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-CraigAssistant 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.

Hello, Lovelies and welcome to the bonus edition of The Life of Briney. Today, Matt Haig is opening up about the three things he leans on when life feels overwhelming. The small, very human anchors that help him stay present when his thoughts are racing, the deadlines are piling up and that familiar fog of anxiety starts to roll in. I can remember post-depression, feeling very strong. That's why I'm published because I didn't care about rejection. I just was like 50 rejection letters. Don't care. I'm going to keep going until I get published. I've done the impossible thing, which was staying alive and getting through that depression, and no one will know how impossible that is.

My chat with Matt coming up right after this. Matt, hey, welcome to the life of you. It's all about you. God, yes, which is, yeah, which is unhealthy, isn't it? No, but I think you're going to just have to suck it up. and enjoy it. Because here's a thing, Matt, Hague, I'm going to call you by your full name at all times, is that if you don't enjoy even the bits,

you know, like we've got to live it all, right? We've got to live it all. And sometimes I think we've signed these little invisible contracts where we're like, I have to not enjoy. I have to make sure there's always something that I'm looking out for to show that I'm not okay and that things aren't okay and that I'm sort of slightly anxious and on the edge. Enjoy your moment in the spotlight, Matt Haig.

Okay. I'll try. Okay. So, speaking of which, one of the lines that really stood out in the Midnight Train is Wilbur talking to himself in the past where he says to himself, you know, he wants to tell the younger version of himself that there is a darkness that will chase him throughout his life. and that really moved me. And I feel like me, the darkness chases you as well, maybe. And I wanted to know in this episode of The Life of You, what the things are that you put in your life to try and help stave off the darkness or maybe just to help you when the darkness does catch you.

Yeah, it's very interesting because I think, you know, the first half of my life, the things that used to save off the darkness were also, paradoxically, the things that sent me into the darkness. So you would drink, take drugs, get addicted to things. I even got addicted to gambling for a little while. Did you? Yeah, I spent £6,000 in a casino once. Really? I definitely did not have £6,000 to spend.

Matt, have you spoken about this before? I think I've once mentioned it on social media, but it's a bit of a sore subject in our house and I don't really want to dwell on it. Dwell on it. I'll put that as a self-fulfilling prophecy for my son who's already interested in poker. Right, yeah.

Keep away from that. But no, I was pretty much anything. Anything, well, you know, tended to be, apart from the shoplifting, I stayed just about within legal boundaries. I mean, shoplifting is obviously illegal. And, you know, but legally, I push pretty much every limit. I like to think I'm a moral person,

but I'd say the thing that's just about kept me in line is fear. Like, fear of getting, ever since I got arrested, that was really, like, scary, like, at the time of, my mum knowing that she was coming to the police station to see her shoplifting son and that just about was enough electric shop treatment that I needed to just about stay in line but I mean like I used to

on social media like distract myself in the early days and things like Twitter I used to use arguing as a distraction tactic so I'd always distract myself if it wasn't drink and if it wasn't drugs it would be something that wasn't healthy and it could be almost anything I mean me and Andrea in the early stages of our relationship

were unfaithful in different ways so we've had I mean I'll say this I mean we've been we're in a very long relationship and you know we've been together since we were teenagers so we've had every everything but you can have thrown at a relationship in our relationship it's been messy at times and it's been you know and that's brought with it a lot of guilt and guilt is useless in the sense that it then makes you depressed and then makes you want to

do another stupid thing to distract yourself so you're in the cycle yeah the addict cycle yeah I know it well yeah where you just yeah you do something hate yourself you know and then the moment you just get beyond hating yourself you still got a low self-esteem issue so you do the next stupid thing and I was in that pattern for a long time

before I stopped drinking before I got therapy before I just something switched a few years ago where my son got quite seriously ill and it just clicked a responsibility thing that should have switched in my mind obviously earlier

but it just thought you know the particular thing I'm talking about with my son it was totally unrelated to me and Andrea but it was just a thing that just made me think what's important in my life so it's annoying that I'm very, type of person who needed that those sort of shocks and to sort of hit boundaries and to sort of like react against them and I couldn't just behave well from the start you know what I mean but I think

and this isn't to make excuses for myself or for like being an absent father at times or for being a son who probably aged my mum and dad in all kinds of ways not just through shoplifting but through being very badly behaved when I was younger. I think what people don't understand is not all minds are equal. I think this can be some very good people who act a certain way and then some people with no moral compass at all who act in exactly the same way. But, you know, some people with minds that need, like dopamine all the time and stimulation all the time, they're at a disadvantage in terms of behaviour instantly because they can't just settle.

They need a life of action. And often that life of action is a life of action. of stupid things. Impulsive behavior. Yes, like my, like, the best way I've heard ADHD described, and I don't know if it was this type of a doctor or whatever, but it's where your brain can't prioritize

in terms of importance or should. It prioritized in terms of interest and stimulation. So if anyone had a brain where it just did the most interesting thing rather than the most important thing, it wouldn't take long for their life to get messy. To unravel. To unravel. And so when you have that undiagnosed,

you, A, do stupid things and then B hate yourself and are confused by yourself. and see you do even more stupid things because you've got depression on top and I would often have this split self where the good part of me was watching the naughty part of me so when I was in my drug years

if I was scrabbling around a sock drawer for cocaine or younger if I'd open like a children's book I had which was like swallows and Amazon's and I'd cut out the pages to have my little stash of marijuana

silk cut half an ecstasy tablet they're not going to find it in swallows and amazons are they it in swallows and Amazon's and I like the adventure of that but there'd always be this person watching me this good saintly person. And so to be like a naturally instinctively good person

and to do bad things is a weird kind of torture. You know, and so, and that's the kind of like, if you're an addict that kind of comes with that. And it's a vicious circle. So there's a lot of good people like who might be, you know, heroin addicts robbing people's houses to get their next fix but they're just lost to

cycle. And I'm fascinated by that and especially in this age where we've got no empathy for people. You know, there doesn't seem to be a political wing now which has compassion for you know, that kind of behaviour or, you know, it

takes a certain kind of saintly person in 2026 to have space for people who you know, you know, do things that are bad for society. Anyway, yeah, I just feel like it took me a long time to work out the good things I can do for my brain, which help it. What's number one? Number one is always like boring.

It's always like sleep and how you live and just having a routine that works. So I'd say a vaguely healthy routine. Structure. Structure. Yeah, let's say. structure. It is boring but it's so necessary. It is boring, you know, because, you know, if you don't sleep, if you were like hung over, then everything else doesn't really matter, does it? If you've got a crazily bad hangover,

then nothing, it doesn't matter what good news you get that day, you're still going to be crazily hung over and feeling awful. So, structure, sobriety, the thrill of sobriety, because sobriety sounds so boring and earnest, doesn't it? It does, though, doesn't it? Don't you ever feel like you in the... No, I don't think so, but I'm worried... Sobrity has been the most interesting part of my life. Yes, but to convince someone who's got a drink problem of that while we're still in the midst of...

Well, it's not our job to do that. No. But it is our job to talk about how it... That is the case. It's a story of hope, isn't it? It's thrilling and it's brave. And it's like... to sort of like greet myself,

drink for me was to put a barrier up, you know, to numb myself. And same with drugs, to numb myself, to stimulate myself out of myself. I just wanted to escape. It's like a fear of the dark. And so the bravery and thrill

of meeting yourself in sobriety as you is like so profoundly massive in good and bad ways but it's the own it becomes the only way like I would love to be someone who was a moderate

I would love you know I definitely I'm not someone who is puritanical about health I'm not puritanical about my own health I'm not proletanical about my diet or anything For me, not having alcohol is not about physical health at all really. It's just about how I feel and how I am. And I can sincerely say I've had a lot of exhilaration,

a lot more exhilaration of a genuine kind, this side of sobriety than ever did before. Yes, if you're taking lines of cocaine, you're going to feel high. But for me, the problem with cocaine and the problem with alcohol was it was never enough. You would have a line of cocaine. You would have 30 minutes. And then you'd be just thinking about the next line of cocaine. More, more, more, more.

And it traps you in that. And it's just, it's kind of like a metaphor for like modern consumerist society. whereas sobriety is kind of like it's a open field it's like you can go out sober and you're not having to think of imaginary units or percentages or

you know that thing like every Friday night when I was a teenager you'd go to the shop and you didn't care about brands you didn't care about taste you would care about the number The percentage of alcohol. And you do, that's where most of your maths came from, working out. How quickly can I get to oblivion? Yeah, exactly.

Bottle of Thunderbird, you know, special brew, whatever it was. Tasted horrible, made you feel awful, but got you drunk. How long has it been since you had a drink? Five years, completely, I was sort of like, starting to discipline myself in that I didn't drink ever in the weekdays and I'd just have sat at it. This was at the start of COVID. I was still drinking the very first lockdown. I was drinking a lot of gin on a Saturday night and I don't know. Gin was a sneaky one because I never drank it when I was young. So for me I pretended it was like an adult drink and that

it wasn't really like hedonistic drinking. It was I liked the taste. It was classy. It was classic. It was classy. Sophisticated. But then when I realised I'd say I was just having one drink and then I wouldn't just have one drink. I was just thinking, I just don't. And it wasn't, it wasn't ruining my week because it was just one day. So it might ruin my Sunday, but it wouldn't ruin my week.

But the reason I wanted to totally knock it on my head was it was a dependency because on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I was looking forward to gin at the weekend. So I could get through. but weak by thinking of that. And so that fear of not having anything to fall back on. Like if I have some dark thoughts, you've got to sit with those dark thoughts and just sort of like, just like, just sit.

Sit with the discomfort. Sit with that thing we're not encouraged to have for five seconds without trying to find a solution. And yeah, it's hard. And I'm not speaking from like the holy high ground now. I've still got like I can still see addictive behavior in other ways. Comes out sometimes in. I can see it.

I can see it. It comes out in healthy ways. But that's good to be able to see it. That's, I mean, that's kind of. You know, chasing a runner's high is the same thing. It's much better for you. And, you know, I will always have that need for movement and, uh, some kind of exhilaration or, but I, to,

recognize yourself enough but to say it's worth sitting with sobriety you know we're getting to I'm getting to the stage now me and my wife are getting to the stage where our parents have very serious issues and you know my father-in-law's going through Alzheimer's my dad's just gone through cancer sorry about my mom's got heart issues yeah they've got the stuff you have if you're 50 years old and you've got parents and it's like before I would have so felt like I needed a drink but it's that's just a story you tell yourself I used to say it I was terrible at public speaking I had no confidence at all about public speaking and obviously if you become a professional writer you end up having to do professional speaking I even in a few

years ago well 2019 I went on a theater tour where I had to walk out of out on stage or on my own for an hour, like a really unfunny stand-up comedian and do my sort of TED talk kind of thing. And they asked me, the touring company, they asked me what I wanted backstage and I had a bottle of absolute vodka backstage every day, not to drink the whole of it, but I needed the taste of vodka in my mouth. To get on the stage? Because in my head, it was still, At that point, it was still like a Clark Kent's phone box. You know, like I could become a confident person with alcohol. So I needed to know, you know, I need to be reminded of alcohol

to sort of feel I could enter that state because that's always the mentality I had. And alcohol was my strength for superpower. When I was in a beafer, when everyone was taking drugs, I was taking drugs as well, but not as much as some people. But what I was really doing was drinking a lot. And so I was known as a drinker, as someone who could take their drink.

It was the first macho thing I was good at being able to take drink. I couldn't take drink because my hangovers were awful. I'd often vomit in one, but I could look, because I was so good at masking autism without realizing, I was also good at masking being drunk. So I could feel quite wobbly and drunk, but still look normal and sound normal. So that was like my thing

I was like I was good at drinking and like you know the sort of older lads in a bea the more hardened lads they respected me because I could drink and I didn't have anything else that they respected but they're respected

but I could drink a lot of alcohol so it becomes part of your identity and it becomes like you're this sort of like yeah it's weird because I had a bea and I also had like an English degree and like the English degree had sort of taught me about all like Lord Byron and all these great sort of poets and Hemingway and stuff who had always been drunks as well so I felt like I was something poetic about

as well so poetic. And match. Yeah, the two sort of masculine. I can be all the things I want to be. Yeah, and it was all round alcohol and it was just, it was pathetic really. But, you know, it's so tied to identity. So you need to create a new identity for yourself. I think sometimes that people get ties.

to it anyway. So we're going, so number one is structure, number two is sobriety. What's number three? Well, it's obviously people. I mean, for people's the main, like I am so lucky that Andrea stood by me when most people wouldn't.

But she shouldn't have stuck by me probably. But I had someone in my life who stuck by me and that was massive and I would genuinely would not be here she is awesome she is awesome yeah I don't

I don't I don't yeah and you don't want to turn her into this sort of two dimensional angel you know she's a real human being

and she gets frustrated and she gets angry and she gets cross with me and but there's been times when it's been totally deserved and we used to ral

like crazy and the part of The guilt for me, well, I've got all kinds of guilt, but one of the guilt issues about wrapped around mental illness is the fact that I'd gone from one type of extreme person to the opposite type of extreme person. So I went from party animal to recluse.

To agoraphobic recluse. So if I'd say 80% of our arguments before I had a breakdown but because I wanted to stay out later. That was it. You know, it'd be two in the morning and I'd say, oh, it's a beaver. You only live once. You've got to taste everything.

You've got to experience everything. You know what I mean? You sound like a nightmare, Matt. I was a nightmare. I was a nightmare. I definitely was a nightmare. No, you sound like me. You sound like me.

You sound like me. I was fun. But it was a very dangerous kind of fun. And another type of argument would be very related to that, where Andrea would go home and I would just stay out. And like, you know, if we were in a befer, there'd be people to go to Pasha with or something. And I'd just roll in at 7 in the morning.

And I'd have had some story about taking drugs with some forgotten 80s pop star in the toilets and Pasha. and yeah I just and I thought I felt that was living and I felt that was like what life was about

and it was just what it was about was denial and inability to face things and I needed to have a breakdown if I hadn't had a breakdown was saving me

breakdown almost makes me believe in God because it was like an act of sort of intervention that had to happen kind of self-intervention maybe but I'm actually even though I'm still kind of got PTSD about

going for a breakdown because it's like hallucinations it's like vomiting it's just like pain it's like feeling out the sky's falling in running out of supermarkets and shopping centres

hiding under tables you know It's serious stuff, but I'm still thankful for it because if I'd have stayed mid-level depressed without acknowledging it, thinking, you know, that macho bullshit around booze. And if I'd have stayed in that mode, I don't know. I mean, I'd possibly be dead for other reasons now. or ill, very ill, or just, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was lucky because I had parents and I'd always had a house to go to,

but I'd be in a bad way. And I'm so glad. I needed to break down to sort of like, find myself, is that? Break through. One of my favourite stories when I was a kid was about, you know, the Iron Giant, Ted Hughes. And the giant sort of big,

robot crashes onto the beach and has to build himself from scratch and that's what I always thought of when I was coming out of my breakdown. I was like building a human like from wasteland and that's what it felt like coming out but there's something empowering about that and I can remember post-depression feeling very strong like that's why I'm published because I didn't care about rejection. I just was like 50 rejection letters. Don't care. I'm going to keep going until I get published.

So it's like I've done the impossible thing which was staying alive and getting through that depression and no one will know how impossible that is. No one will see this invisible war just like we can't see

other people's invisible wars when they're going through mental illness but there's all kinds of heroes to themselves out there in this world who've been on all kinds of metaphorical battlefields in the metaphorical trenches

and survived all kinds of shit and we're walking past these heroes all the time and so in my 20s I almost became like really like arrogantly confident that I could do anything because I'd done something that I'd told myself was totally impossible so it's like what's the next impossible thing oh I want to be a published writer

oh okay mom I'm going to be a published writer I'm like oh no you've got to get a proper job but I just carried on and I did it. I didn't make any money from it for about a decade, but I got published and, yeah, I just... Thank God. And that was the... If I've got any talent at all,

it was that talent of, like, resilience at that point of just, like, I'm going to keep going, like, the Iron Giant until I get published and just keep going. If there's one hand crawling along that beach, that hand is going to keep going and keep living. We're so glad that you did. I love that because your third thing started as Andrea.

But actually, no, what it became was your breakdown. And that is, I think, perhaps the most stunning. Yeah, well, she was there every step of that way. But I do think that is perhaps the most stunning and helpful piece of advice that we've had on the life of you. And it will be immensely comforting to anyone right now who is listening and who is perhaps. breaking down. Thank you, Matt. Oh no, thanks, Brian. That's really lovely. I do feel like a light relief of therapy just talking to you.

You've made me feel a fuck of a lot better and I'm really grateful. You're one of those very rare people in the media world who's like genuine and I'm not the same out just to blow smoke at your ass. You're just like, I feel like I'm talking to Brianne today so I can just chat and like, you know, have the space to be yourself and that's rare. You need more people aren't you? Thank you, Matt. And there you have it. Matt's three things he can't live without, even when his brain wants to sprint off in 12 different directions at once.

If any of these chimed with you or sparked ideas about your own non-negotiables, message me on Instagram at at Life of Briny Pod and tell me what you lean on when your mind feels wobbly. Or you could just leave us a review and give us a follow. Most importantly, look after yourself, be as kind to you as you are to everyone else and I'll see you on Monday. Thank you.