Matt Haig

Experiment. Can we hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time? 1. It is wrong to weaponise suicide to force an injunction to stop an investigation that will shine light on terrible and criminal behaviour. Especially as DARVO is real. And 2. That there IS a relationship between suicide and feelings - accurate or not - of guilt. Not for this perpetrator but for the mentally ill watching this with distorted views. And so the thousands of responses suggesting or even joking that suicide is an acceptable price for bad behaviour is, I think, also a public health risk. Even if you genuinely think that people who have done terrible things should die at their own hands, the problem is that guilt is not always a reflection of actual crimes. Again I am talking about the people watching this. Not the person manipulating the courts. For instance, OCD people often feel terrible about themselves. They will think a sexual thought then imagine they are the equivalent of Jeffrey Epstein or a minor Royal even though they haven’t actually done anything but have a brain torment them with a guilty thought. These guilty feelings are part of the reason why people with OCD like symptoms face a TEN TIMES greater risk of suicide. I don’t know. It always just seems like suicide is treated as a joke, because people still like to see it as a decision rather than a symptom. In turn, this also trivialises the case of victims and turns it more into a dark sport. So my own view: the threat of suicide should NOT protect perpetrators of crimes, especially as such protection harms the mental health of THE VICTIMS. Yet also: the medieval pitchforkery in comment sections around such issues isn’t always as ethical or healthy as the commentators think. I would imagine, in the kind of warped and distorted mind of a person with severe depression - especially coupled with OCD or other anxieties - it could be quite triggering. And also, even if someone has done something wrong - not criminal, but an affair or a lesser betrayal or something they hate themselves for - I know from personal experience that too can push a vulnerable mind in the direction of a death they don’t deserve.

We are in an illiterate dumb ahistorical age full of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and shit jokes and AI and the antidote is good books and banned books and graphic novels and audiobooks and songs and deep conversations

Maybe even eight times. Cities are just better without cars. And I had a bit of a disagreement with the taxi driver who went on a rant about mayor Sadiq (sometimes you detect a - ahem - grain of racism just in how someone chooses to pronounce a name). He thought it would increase crime. I think it will decrease it because there is less chaos and stress and crowd congestion. My dad was an architect working in the worst parts of London whose job it was to understand how architecture creates crime and problems and narrow busy paths were often to blame. Open and brighten things up and crime decreases. And you realise it is quite a wide street. Even before the landscaping I like it. I could almost shop on it. Well. We’ll see. One step at a time. It’s not Venice but it is nice to breathe. A 5 star decision.

The writer Stefan Zwelig said that Brazil is always the country of the future so it may have voted for the far right a decade ago but it is defeating it now so that is a good sign for the world. Congratulations Brazil. A win against the far right and big tech. I was meant to be visiting you next week but I will be there next year.

Okay this was among my most popular stories ever. People may not admit it here but a lot of you feel like this

Sorry. Rant time. Just saw a viral post mocking Gen Z for missing work because of ‘anxiety’ when back in the day Millennials and Gen X would turn up to work after drinking three hours before. Won’t share it. But 50,000 likes. Wall to wall agreement in the comments. Haha Gen Z snowflakes. Haha. It riled me more than almost anything in weeks. Because I know both. Anxiety and hangovers. I had a hangover every day for years. During my Ibiza years I was still drunk when I went to work the next day and still had drugs in my system. I once went to work the day after I had ‘won’ a drinking contest with someone who ended in hospital so by the sad standards of the time I was hardcore. When I worked in dead end London jobs I had four pints followed by two Black Russians (vodka, Tia Maria, coke) every single night. The continual hangover was awful. But. It was nowhere near as bad as anxiety can be. When I fell into a state of pure capital A Anxiety I couldn’t leave the house let alone commute to work. Anxiety is a mind at war with itself so the loser is always you. A hangover is pain for which you know the cause. On an MRI it looks nothing like anxiety. Anxiety - the clinical work preventing kind - is far worse than the worst hangover. The internet needs to understand something called COGNITIVE HYPERALGESIA. A state where the mind amplifies pain and distress and discomfort when there is no known cause. What really fucks me off is that these posts enforce stigma and denial. Not because these fake tough guys truly believe that anxiety is nothing but because they are terrified of mental illness. Terrified of their own minds and of feeling. And glorify hangovers to stay glorifying their coping mechanism. A mechanism that, ironically, very often fails and drops you into a state of terror. There is nothing weaker than a tough guy. I have survived anxiety and hangovers and hangovers are literally nothing in comparison. Stop being a bootlicker to a broken world. Let the young and anxious have time off when they need it. They have the courage and wisdom to realise when they do. Happy Sunday.