Don't Overthink This

Exclusive Sneak Peek

The peak of my existence came the year I turned twenty-three. Or maybe it was even earlier than that. It feels really pathetic to say you’re at the peak of your existence when you’re also clinically depressed. Maybe my real peak came at thirteen, before any of this started.

Either way, my life fell off a fucking cliff at twenty-six, figuratively speaking of course, and my crumpled, pathetic self has been lying at the bottom ever since, waiting for the day I’m lucky enough to not wake up.

The thought of killing myself comes to mind often, but my crippling anxiety keeps me from following through with it. I imagine my parents finding me the way we found Keelie’s dad, and there’s no amount of depression in the world that brings me more pain than the thought of inflicting all of that on someone else. Instead, I let the pain engulf me. I absorb it and wait to die.

Two years of lying at the bottom of this cliff have gone by, and now I’m twenty-eight. There are days when I fall down this rabbit hole of suicidal fantasies—usually before my first pill of the day—and today death by starvation seems most promising. It wouldn’t have the same gut-ripping effect as your traditional suicide. Sure, they might still call it a suicide, but my family could say things like “He was too depressed to get out of bed” instead of having to say “He took a shit ton of pills and never woke up.” That’s how I would do it though, if there weren’t other people to consider. I would take a hearty handful of oxycodone, fall asleep, and never wake up. Blissful euphoria until my last conscious breath. Peaceful.

But the reality is that once your brain falls asleep, your body still tries to save you. You gasp for air, your stomach rejects the pills, your heart stops. And it’s only then that your family finds you lying on the floor, lips turned blue, covered in your own vomit. Maybe it’s your mom or your dad. Or maybe it’s your two young kids and their best friend, who walk home after school one day to find you like that. Looking familiar, and yet completely unrecognizable, all at once. It’s an image they’ll never forget. At least, I’ve never been able to.

That’s why death by starvation seems promising. It would be less painful for everyone involved. My starvation fantasy hasn’t taken me as far as Googling what happens to someone as they starve to death, but it’s on my to-do list. I have to be sure it’s nothing like what happened to Rich.

These thoughts of death come to me only when the pills wear off. When I’m high, suicide is far from my mind. At least, it used to be. Pills used to make me feel good, but now I take them to not feel bad.

When I wake up this morning, my brain pulses with pain, and my eye sockets are sore. It’s the beginning of a hangover, mostly. That is, until the skin of my arms starts to crawl, until my hands start to shake. That’s when I know the withdrawals are settling in.

The skin crawls are the absolute worst part about taking pills. Usually, I avoid these at all costs. I do whatever I can to keep the pills from ever wearing off. Except for today. Today, I want the crawls to come, to see how bad things have gotten. To see how long it takes to get from my last taste of oxycodone to the first sign of nausea. What I did not anticipate when making this plan was the possibility that I might wake up horribly nauseous. Miserably nauseous. It isn’t the pills yet. My stomach is churning with the grumbling aftershock of all the alcohol I drank last night. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. The crawls will let me know for sure. Going out with June always seems to blur the line between hangover and withdrawal.

June is a friend. To call her my girlfriend would be a staggering overstatement, even if we see each other a few times a week now. Most days she picks me up and we go to a dingy dive bar across town. She has to pick me up because my license was suspended just over a year ago, after my second DUI. It’s not so bad not being able to drive. Even if I could, I wouldn’t have a car to drive after I clipped a curb and crashed mine straight into a streetlight at full speed. The entire passenger side of my car was completely annihilated. I woke up in the hospital without a scratch on me, or a clue about how I got there. The ER nurse said I was lucky to be alive, and even luckier to be completely unharmed. Had there been someone in the passenger seat, they would have been declared dead at the scene, if there was anything left of them at all, and I would have spent the rest of my life in prison.

I try not to think about that day. Whenever I do, I think about how it could have been Keelie in the passenger seat. The impact of the light pole tearing her apart. Her unidentifiable remains left at the scene while I got rushed off to the nearest hospital, completely untouched. My stomach swirls at the thought of it. Her family and mine would have gladly seen me rot in prison after that, a place where killing myself would be an even more unattainable fantasy than it is now. That day was the only time in my life I was actually happy about being alone.

Praise for Don't Overthink This

“. . . Beautifully written second-chance novel that deals extensively with addiction . . . A raw emotional book that captivates you, and you can't put it down until you've finished it.” - Maddison O., Reviewer

“. . . Written so beautifully that I just could not put it down . . . If I could give this book more than five stars I would in a heartbeat.” - Monique Rivas, Reviewer

“I was enthralled by this book, partly because it was a dark romance; a book written [from the] point of view of a struggling drug addict . . . If you're looking for a romance that's a little darker and raw, this is the book for you.” - Melissa Long, Reviewer

“The writing was beautiful and the story was so captivating.” - Caroline Thomas, Reviewer

“[Don't Overthink this] is one of the most well-written stories about addiction that I’ve read in a long time. It’s raw and authentic and I literally had chills from reading Matty’s thoughts while he was going through withdrawal and trying to stay sober.” - Alysa Mathews, Reviewer

“Brutal and beautiful . . .With stark and striking language, this book really kept me glued to the page.” - Cal Langston, Reviewer

[See the full review]

“This book was heartbreaking, beautiful, and so, so hopeful all at once. I am so glad for this book. I was a bit wary, I'll admit, going into this one. It can be tough to handle addiction well, with grace and honesty. Piazza handles it with so much more. Within the first few pages of this book, I was on the brink of tears . . . The struggle was so well written I did not want to put this book down.” - Elisabeth Marathas, Reviewer