Sam Delaney: Sort Your Head Out

Reviewed by H Brown

Sam Delaney is the author of ‘Sort Your Head Out,’ a book about mental health. He spoke on commonly-forgotten issues people, especially men, must face with society and mental health. The book talks about the impact his mental health and alcohol misuse had on, not only himself but the people around him, such as his wife and kids. He had never made the connection between mental health problems and alcohol/drug misuse; he told himself they were separate issues, to be dealt with separately.

The focus Sam had was not to give people advice, but to let people know they were not alone and there were ways to overcome problems. He said he was particularly good at hiding his issues and whenever he hinted at needing help people often dismissed it as ‘no you don’t have a problem, it’s not that bad,’ which made things harder for him when wanting to find help. He also said that when wanting to quit alcohol, he didn’t do it for his wife and kids, but he did it for himself. He knew it was a bad place to be in and he wanted to fix it and needed motivation, the motivation being wanting to fix things for himself.

People loved his extreme honesty in the book and in the entire event. He was fun to listen to and learn about; there was a range of people there, and everyone was interested in listening to him, there was never a boring moment. The event had an amazing balance of covering the topic at hand and comedy to keep people interested.

I can confidently say that I would go back to listen to him talk about different books if he were to come back to the Wigtown Book Festival.