Cedar Rapids father, husband turns grief into hope for the next generation

CEDAR RAPIDS — On Christmas Day in 2021, Jeff Johnston started spending the holiday weekend trying to count down from 10.

After losing his stepson in 2016 to a fentanyl overdose and his wife in 2021 to grief-induced alcoholism, he opened up seven boxes nearby. Their contents did not soothe him with tidings of comfort and joy, but inundated him with reminders that they could now only be memories: homecoming photos of Seth, love letters from Prudence, report cards for a boy with potential and family photos of a life they tried to live to the fullest.

After the family of five was reduced by two, the successful financial adviser was ready to end it all. But as he pressed the gun against his head all weekend, he couldn’t count lower than three.

When Seth was found in a Waterloo motel room, Jeff — who’d started Premiere Investments & Wealth Management in Cedar Rapids — took 14 months off work to quit drinking. He proceeded to spend the entire sabbatical drinking daily.

After a bender in 2017, a glance at two things woke him up, cold turkey: his wife, trembling in withdrawal, and his own face in the mirror.

“I realized I couldn’t get her to quit drinking. I thought if I can’t get her to quit, I could get me to quit,” he said.

If he got healthy again, maybe she would follow, he thought. But drinking, he realized, was only the symptom of her despair.

“Grief was stronger than any addiction,” he said. “Grief was the cause.”

Now, Jeff’s life is dedicated, in part, to helping others identify the causes before it’s too late.

Seth’s prompt

With wife Prudence, Jeff raised his stepson from age 2. He remembers Seth, who died at 23, for the talents that addiction kept him from pursuing.

Seth was highly competitive, with a natural talent for basketball, and musically inclined with a passion for playing his guitar and writing rap lyrics.

A hyperactive child, he was prescribed ADHD medications starting in fifth grade. Later, as a teenager, he sold them and started drinking.

Though Jeff spent 34 years drinking as an alcoholic, the booze alone didn’t worry him, at first. For him, it was simply a teenage rite of passage.

“Alcohol wasn’t escaping trauma, it was exploring life,” he said.

But for Seth, it progressed to marijuana and cocaine. As frustrations with substance use struggles mounted, sports tryouts were unsuccessful. Addiction took over the void, and the tools of his hobbies became capital to fund it.

“I remember his white electric guitar. He was just self-taught, down there playing, his tongue hanging out,” Jeff said. “And one day, it was gone. Then his amp was gone. Then the boys’ Xboxes were gone.”

The things that should’ve been a child’s coping mechanisms were put into a box, never to return.

His legal troubles started as a teenager with public intoxication and an OWI. In 2015, he went to prison for stabbing someone. Sprinkled between it all, multiple attempts to get sober didn’t stick.

“For every two or three steps he took forward, he’d take five back,” Jeff said.

In desperation, he remembers giving Seth a common admonition that turned out to be more of a prophecy: “You’re going to be in prison, or dead.”

But he didn’t mean it literally. He always saw the little boy he knew, inside an adult imprisoned by addiction. And Jeff was a fixer.

“I thought I could reach in and save that kid,” Jeff said. “But this stuff is so strong.”

Seth was released from prison in 2016, two months before his death, and started working construction in Waterloo.

Shortly after, Seth was introduced to heroin by a friend. Judging by the marks on his arm, Jeff said, Seth hadn’t been using it for more than a week before encountering a fatal shot of fentanyl.

The speech

As Jeff delivered the news of Seth’s death to his other two sons, he encountered a defining life moment he believes every father has only a few times in their lives. In a brief speech, he offered their family a choice at the fork in the road.

“We have one road of anger, despair and hatred, and we’ll become alcoholics and addicts ourselves,” he said. “Or, we have a road of motivation and inspiration. This can be the single greatest moment in our lives to make a difference in the lives of others.”

Jeff couldn’t yet articulate what this service to others would look like. Today, he has harnessed the understanding into a shorthand.

“Death came into my life to be a better person, not a bitter person,” he said. “It can be the spawn of amazing things.”

A new beginning

In 2020, Jeff started the nonprofit Choices Network, Ltd., dedicated to educating children, parents, teachers and coaches on the importance of making positive choices. Later that year, he started the Living Undeterred Project to build a network of resources that could develop alternative solutions to mental health and addiction crises facing families across the country.

But helping others as a passion project on the side wasn’t enough. So in 2022, he sold his shares in the investment firm he started from scratch. Then, he bought an RV for a Living Undeterred tour around the western states to simply talk to more people with the same challenges his family faced.

One of them was Ryan Hampton, a former member of the Clinton Administration who has become a forefront expert in addiction recovery and drug policy reform spaces. Now sober after a decade-long opioid addiction, Hampton serves as a volunteer adviser to Jeff’s newest application.

“The kind of pain, grief and devastation Jeff has suffered gives anyone free license to be mad at the world for the rest of their lives,” Hampton said. “He decided to tip the scale not in the direction of despair, but in the direction of hope.”

No matter where Jeff’s RV stopped, the problems were the same — from refugee centers in Oregon to Native American reservations in New Mexico to middle class students in Idaho. Depression, suicide and addiction didn’t care.

“It was like ‘Groundhog Day’ every day. I’d go to these events and speak, and the same moms and dads come up,” Jeff said. “They looked different, but it was the same stories.”

That’s when it hit him — the problem was bigger, so he needed to think bigger.

“That’s now his mission, he wants to help people,” said son Ian Johnston, 23. “I’m just hoping he can find peace in it.”

A bigger application

Now, Jeff hopes to change the behavior that precedes addiction with an app that makes mental wellness — not just mental health — as natural as eating and breathing.

Gen Z is more likely to report mental health concerns than other generations, according to the American Psychological Association. Research by the Walton Family Foundation indicates that 42 percent of Gen Z — those born from the late 1990s to the early 2010s — is battling depression and feelings of hopelessness, nearly twice as high as Americans just a few years older than them.

Brightn, launched last August, is taking an electronic space known for its problematic effects on youth and using it to help them plan their mental health.

Built to feel less clinical than a multitude of other mental health apps, it’s named after Jeff’s 7-year-old granddaughter, Brighton — the daughter Seth never met.

With 1,000 active users and a community college partnership in New York, the app will fully launch with subscription plans soon.

“We’ve been telling kids not to go do things for hundreds of years, and it’s the worst it’s ever been,” Johnston said. “It takes 66 days to change a habit. Kids don’t have that today — they’ve got 66 seconds on TikTok.”

Intake questions on the app designed by behavioral therapists customize an algorithm that guides and encourages each Brightn user to journal, track their mood over time, find camaraderie in others their age and inspiration from celebrity role models.

Those role models will include legendary Iowa Hawkeyes basketball player Kenyon Murray and sons Keegan and Kris, NBA players for the Sacramento Kings and Portland Trail Blazers, respectively. The Murray family, who have been close family friends of the Johnstons since the ‘90s, have taken Jeff’s mission to heart.

“As a coach, I see it all the time. … What too many people do is walk away from the situation because they feel they can’t handle it or aren’t equipped,” Kenyon said. “Brightn gives value to the person using it when they can’t find value in other things. It allows them to better understand themselves and better understand resources to help them get to a place of being productive.”

Input from experts in practices like meditation and breath work are embedded to help youth find the kind of coping mechanisms that Seth struggled to grasp, at times.

They’re some of the same tools Jeff has relied on in his journey, too. Using daily meditation and exercise, he hasn’t rid himself of the self-described demons that have followed him, like suicidal ideation.

But he has learned how to dance with them.

“We’re not trying to police them, we’re not trying to scare them to change behavior,” he said. “We’re trying to show them that, in the middle of your misery, there are beautiful things going on right in front of you. They can look at life as less about surviving and more about thriving.”

Over time, they can also earn points for their participation and cash them in for merchandise, apparel, or charitable donations like tree plantings.

All in

To survive the initial stages of app development, the startup needs to raise $1.5 million. Jeff has contributed his retirement fund — $500,000 — toward the endeavor.

It’s a risk he might not have advised as a planner for many clients. But after losing bigger things in life, it’s a risk he’s compelled to take.

“I’ve buried half my family. What’s burying my retirement?” he said.

And if that’s successful, he already has ideas for other endeavors, like a teen crisis center in Cedar Rapids.

Death was what started the entire endeavor for Jeff, and it’s the only thing that can force him to stop it.

Comments: Features reporter Elijah Decious can be reached at (319) 398-8340 or [email protected].