Fantasia opens up about suicide attempt

Fantasia Barrino, the ex-“American Idol” winner who Aug. 10 attempted suicide spoke out about the dark moments leading up to the attempt in a “VH1 Behind the Music” special set to air Aug. 24.

“I didn’t have any fight in me. I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted out,” she said in the special.

She was depressed, she said, about several problems in her life — issues with her family and a lawsuit over the relationship she was in with Antwaun Cook, a married man.

In the show, she recalled looking into a mirror as she overdosed on aspirin and sleeping pills.

“I wanted to go to sleep and just be at peace. I knew exactly what I was doing. You can’t accidentally take a whole bottle of pills,” she said.

Waking up in the hospital after her suicide attempt, Barrino said she remembers thinking, “It didn’t work, I’m still here in this hellhole. Still here with all this drama going on.”

It was a hospital nurse who changed her perspective on her situation, she said.

“My nurse Melanie was a blessing into my life because she didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear,” she says. “She told me what I needed to hear. And she looked at me and said, ‘You gotta get up, and you’ve gotta get out of here, ’cause you haven’t fulfilled your destiny.’ ”