In an excerpt from his memoir, Diary of a Madman: The Geto Boys, Life, Death, and the Roots of Southern Rap, obtained by Billboard.com, the hip-hop star explains his tough upbringing made him take extreme measures to seek love from friends and family.

He writes, "Looking back, I think I just wanted the attention. I see that now. But back then, I felt like attention was the last thing I wanted. I wouldn't have been able to tell you if it was any one specific thing that had pushed me to that point. I just know that I was mad. Mad and sad. I felt like no one wanted me.

"My daddy was dead and my mama didn't want me. I didn't really get along with my step-dad, and my grandma already had nine kids of her own, so there wasn't really a place for me at her house either. I felt like I couldn't do s**t right, and the only way I could get any attention was by f**king up..."

Scarface, real name Brad Jordan, started to feel like the only way to solve his problems was to end his life and one day, as a teenager, he overdosed on his mother's blood pressure medication.

He continues, "I don't remember too much about that particular day, but I know I was ready for it to be done. I was ready to get up out (of) this b**ch. So I went in my mother's medicine cabinet and took all of her blood-pressure medication. I woke up on the bathroom floor with the ambulance parked outside and the paramedics trying to get me up and out the door.

"They took me to the hospital and gave me this stuff, ipecac, to clean out my stomach. I spent the whole next day puking my guts out. It was disgusting. I thought that s**t was going to kill me..."

The rap star's mother picked him up from the hospital and rather than take him home, she forced him into the mental health unit of Houston International Hospital after growing frustrated with his suicide attempts.

He adds, "It wasn't like that was the first time I'd tried to kill myself. I'd been trying to take my own life for years. You name it, I'd tried it. Slitting my wrists with a box cutter and bleeding out all over the bathroom floor, putting loaded guns to my head, all of that s**t. If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you straight up, I was ready to go.

"But I never did it. I never cut myself deep enough or far enough away from my family to be left alone to die. I never pulled the trigger. I never went all the way. That's why I say that I think I really just wanted the attention. If you really want to go, dying is the easy part. It's the living that's hard. That s**t takes a lifetime. And it will test you every step of the way."