Good Deeds

Pete Wentz Joins Suicide-Prevention Campaign

By Stephen M. Silverman

03/19/2008 at 03:15 PM EDT

Addressing the emotional troubles that often plague college-age students, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz has joined such stars as Mary J. Blige and Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan as a spokesperson for the Jed Foundation's Half Of Us campaign.

Because the aim of the program is to cut student suicide rates, Wentz, 28, discusses on camera how he once found himself so alone and despondent at the outset of his career that he contemplated taking his own life.

In the interview for MTV's college channel mtvU, Wentz details how anxiety and depression paralyzed him – until he got the help he needed.

"I always had this underlying depression," he says about feelings he began experiencing in high school.

"The darkest moment was when we had just finished recording our major-label record, and two days later we were going to go to Europe and I felt completely lost and out of control," he says, further explaining that he was prescribed an array of prescription drugs that he only took "the way I wanted."

After having taken a number of Ativan anti-anxiety pills, he called his manager "and I was slurring my words, so he called my mom and my mom called me and she came and got me and we went to the hospital," Wentz says.

"I came home and we realized that we needed to do more than just keep [my] head above water," says the musician. "It's not really about keeping your head above water – it's about feeling all right and feeling safe in your own skin."

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