Lil Wayne wants more people to take mental health seriously as he details the traumatic experience of trying to take his own life when he was just 12 years old.
Over the weekend, Lil Wayne shared sat down with the Uncomfortable Conversations YouTube show where he detailed the day he took up his mother’s gun to end his life.
“I knew where she put her gun and it was in her bedroom. And so I went in her bedroom, grabbed the gun.”
The rapper said he first pointed the gun to his head but then put it to his chest instead because he “got a little too scared.”
“I knew I had a mental health problem when I pulled the trigger,” he said.
The reason behind his suicide attempt was because he had skipped school, and he was afraid he would be in trouble with his mom. At that time, Wayne knew he wanted to be a rapper, but he was afraid that because he was skipping school, his mother in learning about it might have made him quit rapping. He was ready to die so that he could continue to rap.
Lil Wayne says that the events that took place deeply affected his family, and he now hopes that his story can help another person.
“I’m hoping I can help anyone else out there who’s dealing with mental health problems by being vulnerable. It’s so real that if someone even has the guts, the heart, the bravery, whatever to at least admit that they have something going on up there that they’re not sure about, it’s so real that we should only react in the realest way possible.”
He added that parents, in particular, needed to find ways to connect with their children and understand that it’s challenging growing up.
“When you have no one to vent to, no one to get this out to, you can’t bring it to your friends at school because you’re still trying to be cool to them,” he explained, adding that “you’re not tryna let them know, ‘I got something going on at home.'”
The rapper first started sharing his experience in 2018 and has even revealed that while he was locked up in Rikers Prison in 2016, he worked as a suicide prevention aide. At the time, he was serving eight months for possession of a firearm in 2010.
Meanwhile, Wayne has previously called the suicide attempt an “accident.” However, he says in the interview that after that incident, his mother and entire family changed in the way they operate and related to each other.
