Sort Your Head Out: Mental health without all the bollocks

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It's an honest account of one man's struggle with addiction and mental health, how it impacted his life and what tools he uses to help with his recovery. We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused. Ben and Mat chat IRL on a range of important and engaging subjects including making fake phone calls, talking to yourself and sprint triathlons. Eventually, there was a collapse. There always is. Since then, I have rebuilt my life in a simpler way that is easier to manage.

It's another Halcyon podcast mini-series and in this one, we're focusing on the brilliant We Lose Every Week by Andrew Lawn. We Lose Every Week i... Liked the look of this one and Sam Delaney (Journalist, podcaster, editor) looks like someone to investigate more. Sort Your Head Out” is Sam Delaney’s attempt to draft a no-nonsense guide to men’s mental health. He does so less through recourse to medical or academic research, but largely by drawing on his own experience of crushing anxiety, alcoholism, and drug addiction. In doing so, Delaney has written a self-help guide free of earnest psychobabble that seeks to connect with a group often overlooked in the discourse on mental health: working class men.

Men and their mental health: Five free resources

Sharing my truth and dropping the bullshit is better therapy than a pint of Kronenburg and a large whisky chaser ever was, I can tell you. A book that everyone should use to help understand men's mental health. As the full title suggests, it's free of all the mumbo jumbo most books on this topic have. Living in insecure housing and ­experiencing money worries puts you into a constant state of fight or flight,” says writer, broadcaster and former government mental health tsar, Natasha Devon MBE.

I have had to train myself not to fear idleness but to embrace it. I have had to discover beauty and fun in the day-to-day. It is all there in front of us. Nora Ephron, the famous Hollywood screenwriter, once said: “Interesting stories happen to people who know how to tell them.” Nowadays, I spend most of my time telling people stories. Sometimes they ask me how come so many interesting things happen to me. They don’t. The same amount of remarkable, funny or stimulating things happen to me as to the next person. It’s just that, these days, I am clear-eyed enough to see them. Sam Delaney is a journalist and broadcaster whose work has featured in the Guardian, Telegraph and talkSPORT. He is former editor-in-chief of Heat magazine.

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For many middle-aged blokes like me, masculinity is still all about beer, banter and a stiff upper lip. It’s a real shame because since I learned to be more open about my feelings, I have been amazed by the amount of support I have received. I’m 47 now, and I grew up in social housing as the youngest of four brothers in a single parent family. This book tells it like it is in an honest and down to earth way that men who find it hard to talk about mental health will be able to relate to easily. Sam really knows his stuff on this subject and is very frank about his struggles. A great, motivating book that can really help - every bloke should read it— Shaun Ryder What else did people do to sort their heads out when numbing the senses with drugs and alcohol were off the table? Meditation? Yoga? These things work a treat for millions but, to be honest, I just wasn’t into it at that stage of my life. I was frantic, strung out. I couldn’t sleep. I felt pretty lost and alone at times.

Joining Rob and Adam on this episode of the Halcyon Podcast is two-time William Hill Sports Book of the Year and THREE-time Sports Interviewer of... When I landed my first job in journalism I told myself that the best way to succeed was to never stop. When I finished at the office I would go home and write down ideas, do bits of research, read other newspapers and magazines obsessively. I was a product of Thatcherism – totally in thrall to my own productivity. I didn’t just want a steady job that paid the bills. I wanted to create great things constantly and be defined by them. And I also wanted to get totally shitfaced every weekend (plus sometimes on a Thursday). The core message is accurate and a lot resonates. Some practical advice. A yet another good book to put on the shelf marked "Shirk, Rest and Play".

Its starts, as many of its ilk, with the author hitting the low point. However, being pissed at the darts and holding up a sign that asks his wife to marry him does not particularly sound like a real nadir. It was - like a lot of the book - quite amusing though. We are then introduced to traumas large and small in his life. Its interesting. Raised by a single parent in relative poverty, whilst the other parent swanned around in a Bentley. There's quite a lot of this duality at play in the book. It is possible to be a blokey bloke, but be educated. Rich and down to earth etc.