Justin Bieber’s mother Pattie Mallette attempted suicide just months before becoming pregnant with the future pop superstar after struggling to cope with sexual abuse issues, which drove her to drugs and alcohol.

Mallette reveals she first experienced the horror of sexual abuse when she was just four years old and she later drowned her sorrows by indulging in underage drinking and illegal drug-taking.

During an interview on U.S. breakfast show Today, which aired in part on Tuesday, she said, “So many young people that are abused sexually, it just becomes something that they’re familiar with and something that they’re almost attracted to because their purity is taken at such a young age.

“I was full of shame. I learned it’s normal and natural for anyone who’s been through sexual abuse to feel that shame and that blame and feel like there’s something wrong with you. I definitely carry that.”

She sank into a deep depression and attempted to end her life by throwing herself in front of a moving truck when she was just 17. She survived, but Mallette soon fell back in with the wrong crowd and six months later, she found out she was expecting her first child.

She explained, “It was a combination built up over the years of the abuse and the pain, and at the time (of her suicide attempt) I was messed up with all of the drugs and the alcohol. I was in a depression.”

Despite facing a future as a single mum, Mallette refused to listen to her elders who encouraged her to have an abortion: “I just knew I couldn’t... I had to keep him.”

Mallette has detailed her life story in her new memoir, Nowhere But Up: The Story of Justin Bieber’s Mom.