Lil Wayne Reflects on Mental Health Struggles and Childhood Suicide Attempt

Trigger Warning: This story contains instances of suicidal ideation.

“Are you mad ‘cause the judge ain’t give me more time? And when I attempted suicide, I didn’t die. I remember how mad I was on that day. Man, you gotta let it go before it get up in the way.”

Lil Wayne told us back in 2016 that he had “a lot to be mad about”; but now in a new interview with Emmanuel Acho, it seems he has a lot to be glad about, too.

Complex reports that the “Something Different” rapper recently opened up about his mental health struggles on Emmanuel Acho’s Uncomfortable Conversations YouTube series. During the nearly 18-minute long video, Lil Wayne revealed that he first noticed he was experiencing mental health issues when he was 10 years old. He went on to describe the time when, at age 12, he attempted suicide on half day at school as a way to get back at his mother.

“When I was 12 years old, the school year was kinda ending. So what the school was doing was they was giving us half days on a Thursday and a Friday. May have been Wednesday as well. But what I would do was just tell my Moms that I only had a half day on one of those days. So therefore I stayed out the rest of the whole day just like it was a full day. She found out, so when I got home, I got a phone call from my aunt and she was like: ‘she found out, boy you about to get your ass kicked. All that rapping and all that, she about to take that rap folder and she about to throw all that shit away.’”

He later added, “How I knew I had mental health problems was I pulled the trigger. I pulled the trigger, [I shot] in my chest, aimed for my heart. Didn’t feel a thing though. So I wasn’t going through any pain, it was just the shock.”

He went on to explain how that conversation led him to grab the gun that was held in his mother’s bedroom, call the police, and attempt to end his life. After realizing that he was still alive, he recounted how the police took him to the hospital for the gunshot wound and how that day changed the dynamic of the relationship he had with his mother and his family overall.

“So the mom I knew before that day, on my life and everyone’s life in here— I have never met or seen or heard that lady again in my life. So I didn’t die that day but somebody was gone. [That incident] changed life for her, I and our whole family.”