Description

A Life under the Reign of Bipolar
By Kevin Young

ISBN: 978-1-84991-480-2

Published: 2011
Pages: 82
Key Themes: bipolar disorder, manic depression, attention deficit disorder, humour

Description

Riding the Edge is about the author’s struggles through life in dealing with his bipolar disease coupled with attention deficit disorder. There is humor and sadness to the book but it is a life truly lived on the edge.

About the Author

Kevin Young, born in 1963, has lived with bipolar disease all his life but was not diagnosed as such until 2009. How bipolar affected his life can be both sad and humorous. Learning to live with the disease without going over the edge is the hardest part.

Book Extract

From the time I was about twelve years old, I knew I was different
from the other kids but it wouldn’t be until I was forty-six in 2009
that I would find out why. My emotions ran to the extremes. I
could lose control over something and go into a rage, kicking or
hitting whatever inanimate object was nearby, or I could obsess
over a thing or person or go for hours or days full of energy over
a project I happened to be doing at the time. Worse, my
depressions were deadly, causing me to want to do anything it
took to stop the pain.

I was born in 1963, at Cape Canaveral in Florida. My father was
stationed there in the Air Force as a jet mechanic. After leaving
the military, we moved to Wilmington, Ohio, which is where my
parents were both from. My father, of Scottish and Welsh origin,
had grown up in the country side and my mother (nee McAllister)
had grown up the daughter of Clinton County’s deputy sheriff.
When I was about six, we moved from Wilmington to Moraine,
Ohio, then to Bellbrook and on to Appleblossom Place in
Beavercreek, Ohio when I was eight. My parents moved to
Beavercreek so they could both work at Kettering Memorial
Hospital.

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