Battling depression with 'Reasons to Stay Alive'

Matt Haig was 24 when depression enveloped him.

He couldn't escape from a tortuous path of dark thoughts. It led him to a cliff in Spain, where he stood, trying to summon the courage to jump. But he didn't.

It took Haig years of grappling with depression to understand that his experience was not unique — and not permanent. Now, he's written a book about his experiences: "Reasons to Stay Alive."

"Because I was a young man, because depression was giving me a very negative state of mind, I believed this was how I was going to feel forever," Haig told MPR News host Kerri Miller. "It sounds very melodramatic, but I felt like I was experiencing something no one had experienced before — which, ironically, is a very common feeling that people have who suffer severe bouts of depression."

In the book, he discusses his journey out of depths of the depression. "What ultimately helped me," he writes, "is time."

"It's the biggest cliché is the world to talk about time healing, but it's also the truest," he said. "If you hold on, time disproves depression."