Matt Haig Says Age 24 Was the Turning Point in Ibiza
matt haig says the best decision he ever made was to live after a panic disorder descended on him in Ibiza at age 24. He described the moment as being trapped in a burning building, and said turning back toward the villa instead of heading to the cliffs changed everything.
Ibiza and age 24
“The best decision I ever made was to live,” Haig said while revisiting the near-suicide attempt. He said he was in Ibiza, about to head back to London, when the panic hit, and he said, “That literal turning back towards the villa, not heading to the cliffs, is the decision I’m most pleased about.”
“To stay breathing,” he added, when asked what decision mattered most. That line is the core of the interview: not recovery as a neat ending, but a blunt account of the second he chose to reverse course.
Writing after the crisis
After that experience, Haig said he wanted to do something with his life and fulfil his ambition to write a book. He also said he had spent his early to mid-20s doing lots of dead-end jobs, including one selling advertising space to people who were selling advertising space, before he walked out on a lunch hour.
That sequence gives the interview its practical weight. Haig is not describing inspiration in the abstract; he is tracing a line from a mental health crisis to the decision to write, which is the part readers can actually carry forward: if a life changes, it often changes through one concrete turn rather than a grand plan.
Andrea, Newark-on-Trent, and 1989
Haig said he was a latchkey kid in Newark-on-Trent, where a brand-new library in the centre of town became a place he sat while his mum and dad were late from work. He said he was a semi-goth, his first concert was The Cure in 1989, and he was chased for having slightly long hair as a boy.
He also said he met Andrea on her 19th birthday and that they have been together for over 30 years. Against the harder material in the interview, that long relationship reads less like a side note than a counterweight: the same person who nearly died at 24 is now speaking from a life shaped by survival, work, and staying put.
Social media and books
Haig said he still feels quite addicted to social media but has narrowed his use to pretty much Instagram, and that his Twitter years, his X years, are behind him. He also said books are a healthier cultural space than podcasts for men and masculinity.
For readers, the sharpest takeaway is not a slogan but a decision tree: step back from the edge, keep the relationship, keep the work, and choose the habit that gives more than it takes. Haig’s account lands because it is specific about the moment that nearly ended his life and equally specific about the life he chose instead.
