Editor’s note: This article contains a description of a suicide attempt. To get help with depression or suicidal thoughts, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org/chat.
A psychedelic performance during the Millvale Music Festival means to illuminate those darkened by depression and suicide, though the pair of Pittsburgh photons behind it — now shining as a beacon for the affected — almost never found one another through the shadows.
“I woke up, I went to my therapist in the morning, and I said, ‘I know what you have to do, but I’m telling you I’ve made up this decision. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to do it today,’” recalled Jeremy Carter of Penn Hills, a social worker and founder of the peer-led support group Still Here.
Carter later found himself standing on the edge of a bridge 240 feet above the ground — until the chance wail of a passing car horn and the shouting of a woman he’d never met pulled him back from the edge.
In the aftermath, Carter scanned for outlets.
“For me, music was deeply healing — an important part of my recovery after my attempt, now 11 months ago,” Carter said. “I found myself very lost and just turned to music to help with processing and healing — a lot of crying and trying to figure out, ‘Where do I go from here?’”
Finding no peer-led support groups for survivors in Pittsburgh, he started his own.
Since December, Carter’s Still Here has held hour-and-a-half-long, in-person meetings on the third Monday of each month at 6 p.m. Each is shepherded by clinical advisors at the UPMC Health Plan Neighborhood Center in East Liberty. And each has been attended by 12 to 25 people. Some have made their own attempts. Some have suicidal thoughts. Others are grappling with depression. Together, they share voluntarily, take part in group discussions and end with a grounding exercise.
“In all five meetings I’ve had, every single person has shared because they come to this place to share and a lot of people say that they don’t share these things outside of the group with anyone else,” Carter said. “I think that’s really powerful. That’s why we’re there.”
Leading up to the group’s creation, Carter had found music in his time of need. But it’s through one of his group’sInstagramposts thatmusicfoundCarterinreturn.
Thepostresonatedwiththevocalistofpsych/dreampopbandTheQuietLoud. Johny Cross Ainsworth,afull-timemusician(formerly of now-defunct The Show) andformerproducerfromGreen Tree, who had hisownstruggles, thought, “This dude has a bravery I never had.”
“I remember being 12 or 13 in my room and feeling horribly depressed and feeling like tomorrow was just an impossibility,” remembered Ainsworth.
Music showed him a path forward.
“A lot of my friends wanted to [pursue music to] get somewhere or be somebody or have what they perceived to be an easier life,” Ainsworth said. “I just thought that connection that I felt when I was alone in my room, that I knew there was more, like someone lifted up a curtain for me to look behind, that made me want to keep going on.”
Ainsworth reached out, pledged his support to Still Here and the pair formed an immediate partnership. And shortly after, his own music began doing something similar for Carter.
“I started listening to their music and it affected me so powerfully because one, it’s great music. Two, I still have bad days and I still turn to music in those bad days,” Carter said. “And I’ve told Johnny on one of my bad days, I listened to their music and just started crying because — in a good way — it’s just letting it out and healing and cathartic.”
Ainsworth found one aspect of Carter’s approach particularly alluring.
“We don’t do virtual at all because we really need that human connection in the room, in person,” said Carter. “I think that’s what Johnny latched on to, and that’s what people are really finding powerful in the groups is this peer connection — sharing openly, honestly.”
“The isolation, that cutoff from everybody, is really how you quickly get to that dark place,” agreed Ainsworth. “And I think that music is a catalyst away from that. In-person, very real peer connections are life-changing and life-shaping.”
Now, during The Quiet Loud’s Millvale Music Festival set at 4:20 p.m. Saturday on the Double L Bar stage, the pair will sell black t-shirts that read “quiet” in small white font on the front and “Loud.” in large white font with Still Here’s information on the back to raise funds for the organization.
“We’re excited about being able to do more social events outside of the support group meetings to foster more connections between people,” said Carter. “The funds generated … will help us to do that. We want to foster some social connections as well.”
And while the quantity of merch available amounts to a test run, the pair has still-evolving summer plans to intensify the brightness of their partnership. They’re currently exploring creating a music festival of their own sometime next spring that would not only raise further funds for Still Here, but become something Ainsworth hopes might hearken back to the music scene of his youth.
“Music is important and it’s life-saving. It creates an experience where you go to concerts and you make friends, and it’s just not the same anymore. It’s not like it was when I was 12 and 13 and going to concerts,” said Ainsworth. “ … The kind of connections and friendships that might be made at that event is something that excites me more than anything.”
Ainsworth has his eyes set on something outside the city that draws on their early “Still Here Field Trip” theme and has the capacity to welcome “thousands.”
“We’re probably gonna aim big with it,” said Ainsworth. “We’re really open to anything. If it’s something that involves as many people as possible and helps as many people as possible, that’s the number one goal.”