DJ AM Opens Up About Suicide Attempt

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 02, 2008 06:05 PM EST

Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein reveals a tortured past – including a suicide attempt – in a new interview.

Addicted to crack cocaine, overweight, and miserable, "at 24 I felt like my life was over," the hot Hollywood deejay, who has dated Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore, tells Glamour magazine.

"I went into my living room, reached into a cabinet above my TV and grabbed my gun, a loaded .22," recalls the now 34-year-old. "I sat back on my heels, cocked it and put it into my mouth. I pulled the trigger. The gun didn't go off. I thought, 'Are you kidding me? I'm such an [expletive] failure I can't even kill myself? I dropped the gun and broke down. That was the turning point in my life."

Goldstein entered a recovery program and began working out, but relapsed 90 days later. "I had to start all over again. But at that point I had no choice – it was recover or die." A relationship breakup with an unidentified girlfriend made him start eating again, but with time he gained the self-confidence to kick his overindulgent habits.

"I no longer needed a trophy girlfriend or drugs to feel good about myself," he says. "It's been nine and a half years since I’ve had a drink or taken drugs. But every day I have to remind myself that no matter how much time I have behind me, I'm still a drug addict.

"At any given moment, I'm five seconds away from walking up to someone, grabbing their drink out of their hand and downing it. And if I do that, within a week, tops, I’ll be smoking crack."

Whenever his ego is about to get the best of him, he adds, "I have to remind myself [that I'm] a fat crackhead who's lucky to be alive."