How Are
You Alive?
A Practical, Unfiltered Guide To Surviving Depression, Experiencing Joy, And Building A Life Worth Living.
How are You Alive?
The Way Up From Down.
When a world-recognized neuropsychiatrist reviewed Scott Nelowet’s test results after a full day of evaluation, he looked up and asked one unforgettable question.
“How are you alive?”
For nearly fifty years, Scott lived with medically resistant major depression. Every morning he woke with the feeling of heartbreak, and it stayed with him until he finally fell asleep that night. At the same time, an inner voice screamed the most vile things imaginable at volume eleven. People thought he was a terrible listener. The truth was, he often couldn’t hear them over the war raging inside his own mind.
Eventually, even the experts ran out of answers.
Scott didn’t.
How Are You Alive? is not a memoir. It is the book Scott promised himself he would write if he ever found his way up from down. He did. This is that promise.
Written by someone who knows exactly what depression feels like from the inside, it speaks the language depressed people actually hear. It doesn’t offer toxic positivity, empty inspiration, or miracle cures. It offers practical survival strategies, hard earned lessons, and a roadmap to help you survive while you work through the solutions until you discover the one that works for you.
Most importantly, it offers something depression fights to steal from every sufferer.
Hope.
Not false hope.
Not borrowed hope.
Hope from someone who once believed there wasn’t any.
If your depression has convinced you that no one understands, that nothing will ever work, or that this is simply who you are…
This book was written for you.
I know where you are because I lived there for nearly fifty years.
I can help you survive. And there is a way out.
Format: Kindle | Paperback
Print Length: 260 Pages
Publication Date: 8/04/26
Why it’s Different:
Radical Honesty
No toxic positivity or jargon
Lived Experience
Written by someone who built a business and a lifelong marriage while managing chronic conditions
The Blueprint
Practical insights on shifting from surviving a label to owning an identity
For Readers Of:
Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
for those who appreciate a vulnerable, non-linear look at depression that avoids clinical jargon
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
for readers looking for a no-excuses approach to overcoming a traumatic past and a mind that says “no”
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
for those interested in the science of traumatic attachment and the physical reality of mental illness
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
for anyone who values the human side of the therapist-patient relationship and the messy process of growth