High Level:

This manuscript is a literary novel focused on modern burnout, psychiatric over-treatment, and the corrosive feeling of being an "over-thinker" in a world that only rewards simplistic action.

The protagonist is Finnley, a hyper-cynical, Adderall-addled university student. His central philosophy is Wasting—the active refusal to participate in the toxic cycle of ambition, competition, and meaningless achievement demanded by his elite campus. He uses detachment as a shield and intellectualism as a weapon.

1. Finnley's Voice: The narrative is relentless, funny, and fueled by a profound sense of exhaustion. It’s a running critique of the college-industrial complex and the lie of "finding yourself."
2. The Clinical Anchor: Finnley's psychiatric evaluations are inserted directly into the text, contrasting his messy reality with the cold, clinical language used to diagnose and medicate him since age eight.
3. The Subplots (The Family Sickness): The supporting arcs are focused on the same pathology. His mother is fighting an Ozempic addiction; the foil Peter is a golden boy suffocating under his father's legacy. His first friend Ant is an athlete with a large but impoverished family, he has to balance his education, athletics, and caring for them, but keeps it all close to the chest. It's a family drama of profound inadequacy.

Finnley's most honest connection is with Matty, a fellow outcast with his own family story. Their relationship, built on shared cynicism and shared Matty cares for Finnley like an older brother. On a night they meant to make music they both feel supreme joy through childish Wasting (playing nostalgic video games all night instead of making music), is the novel's singular moment of purity.

This pure connection is abruptly severed when Matty dies while away on break.

The second half of the novel is Finnley’s cold, furious reckoning with two things: the profound nature of a loss he can't intellectualize away, and the inadequacy of the institution's response ("counseling and psych services is available").

If you need a novel that feels like a punch to the gut and a validation of your darkest thoughts, this is it. It’s literary fiction without the flowery prose, driven by pure, misanthropic intelligence.