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Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz shocked fans when he revealed that he attempted suicide. He spoke about his battle with depression in order to encourage students suffering from mental illness to seek professional help. Wentz claimed his depression and anxiety paralyzed him during the start of his career where he felt isolated and tried to kill himself. Wentz has joined Mary J. Blige and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins to help the Jed Foundation’s Half Of Us campaign, which is aimed at cutting student suicide rates.

Blige, Corgan, and Wentz sat for video interviews to reveal their darkest hours. The videos appear on MTV’s college channel MTVU. During his revealing interview, Wentz said:

“The darkest moment was when we had just finished recording out major label record and two days later we were going to go to Europe and I felt completely lost and out of control. At that point, I’d seen some doctors and they were Hollywood doctors so they gave me a cocktail (of prescription drugs) but I was kind of the drugstore cowboy, so I took the cocktail the way I wanted to take it. I got in my car. I remember I was listening to Jeff Buckley doing Leonard Cohen’s (song) Hallelujah and sat there and took a bunch of (prescription drug) Adavan in a Best Buy (store) parking lot. And I called up my manager because I was, at that point, completely out of my head with Adavan. And I was talking to him 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. I came home and we realized that we needed to do more than just keep (my) head above water. It’s not really about keeping your head above water, it’s about feeling all right and feeling safe in your own skin. It’s not about keeping your head above water and barely keep going.”

Wow, that took guts to reveal something so personal. Let’s hope that dealing with girlfriend Ashlee Simpson and her family, namely Papa Joe Simpson doesn’t get him down. It’s great that he’s trying to bring awareness about depression to students and encourage them to seek some help - student suicide rates have always been too high, particularly with gay teens.

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