Allen M. Kittrell
One life. Many chapters. More stories than he ever expected to tell.
Allen Kittrell has never been particularly easy to put into one box.
Gymnast. EMT. Theater enthusiast. Storyteller. Survivor. Author.
His life has taken him through unexpected places, difficult seasons, exhilarating highs, deep lows, and more than a few stories that sound too strange to be true.
Now, he's putting those stories on the page.
Before there was a memoir, there was a lifetime of stories.
Allen spent much of his life moving from one experience to the next—often following curiosity, instinct, opportunity, or simply whatever came along.
From the discipline and physical intensity of gymnastics, to the urgency of working as an EMT, to the creativity and unpredictability of theater, each chapter brought a different version of Allen to the surface.
Looking back, those experiences weren't isolated moments.
They were pieces of the same story.
A STORY THAT FEELS REAL
No filters. No pretending. A deeply personal story told with honesty, vulnerability, and humor.
MORE THAN A DIAGNOSIS
See the person behind the label. A life story that explores identity, creativity, struggle, resilience, and everything in between.
A STORY WORTH SHARING
Because honest stories create connection. A memoir that opens the door to meaningful conversations about mental health and the human experience.
For a long time, Allen thought his mind was giving him an advantage.
- There were moments of incredible energy, focus, confidence, creativity, and momentum.
- It could feel like a superpower.
- But there was another side to it.
- Eventually, Allen came to understand that what he had spent years trying to explain was connected to untreated bipolar disorder.
- That realization didn't erase the past.
- Instead, it gave him a new way to understand it.
Gymnastics. Emergency calls. Theater. Depression. Discovery.
Allen's story moves through a life that refuses to fit neatly into one box.
GYMNASTICS
Discipline. Adrenaline. Movement.
EMT
Other people's emergencies.
THEATER
Characters, stages, and another way to escape.
LIFE
The parts that didn't fit neatly anywhere.
DISCOVERY
Understanding what had been there all along.
This isn't a book about having all the answers.
Just Enough Madness began as a cathartic process toward better mental health.
Allen wrote to make sense of the experiences that shaped him—to revisit the highs, confront the lows, and understand the strange connections between them.
But somewhere along the way, the writing became something more.
A story worth sharing.
A conversation worth starting.
And perhaps a reminder that a person can live through complicated chapters without being defined by any single one of them.
Talking about mental health without pretending it's simple.
Allen's story is deeply personal, but the conversation it opens is bigger than one person.
Through Just Enough Madness, he hopes to make space for honest conversations about bipolar disorder, depression, stigma, identity, and the difficulty of recognizing what is happening inside your own mind.
Because sometimes understanding begins with something as simple as finally saying:
“This was my experience.”
I thought I had a superpower.
Instead, Allen discovered he was living with untreated bipolar disorder. That realization changed the way he understood his past, and gave him a new way to look toward the future.
— Allen M. Kittrell
One person's story can make someone else feel less alone.
Allen doesn't claim to have a universal answer for mental health.
What he does have is his experience.
By putting that experience into words, he hopes readers might recognize something familiar in the pages—or simply feel a little less alone in whatever their own story happens to be.
The rest of the story is in the pages.
Discover the life, the highs, the lows, the strange turns, and the moments that eventually became Just Enough Madness.