Welcome to the Jungle ~ Paperback ~ Hilary Smith

From the introduction: When I was diagnosed at age 19, my parents went to a bookstore and bought me a pile of books about bipolar. I threw them away in disgust (actually, exchanged them for books of poetry)-not because I wasn't curious about bipolar, but because all the books treated the subject with clinical rubber gloves. They were dry, annoying, and made me feel like a disease, not a person. I wrote this book because it's the book I should have been given when I was diagnosed. Bipolar is one of the most commonly diagnosed emotional/psychiatric condition and diagnosis tends to come when one is in one's late teens or early 20s. And yet almost nothing has been written about it from eye level and a young person's perspective. Welcome to the Jungle fills that gap with its upfront, empowering approach to the challenges of being diagnosed bipolar. Both humorous and immensely honest, it offers a true "in the trenches" perspective young readers will trust. With chapters ranging from What Just Happened?: Life Beyond Diagnosis to Here Be Downers: Drugs, Booze, and Suicide to Hippy Shit That Actually Works: Herbs, Wilderness Time, and Other Ways to Help Keep Your Shit Together to Hell is Finding Good Insurance: How to Get Your Ass Covered in Troubled Times, Smith brings bipolar self help to the street level. You have bipolar. It's you against the mothership. Lock and load, lock and load...A hip, young, and remarkably funny, perspective on bipolar disorder. . The true insider's view of life with bipolar by a brilliant young writer.