Kurt Cobain bought a gun with which to shoot himself two years before he actually committed suicide, his diaries have revealed.

The influential former singer of rock band Nirvana said he decided to kill himself to escape a "burning, nauseous" stomach illness.

He also said he was driven to heroin addiction because it helped him alleviate the stomach pain, according to diary entries that have been published in US magazine Newsweek.

Courtney Love sold the rights to her husband's journals

A book of his journals are to be published in November, eight years after he shot himself.

They also shed light on his sense of isolation, problems handling fame and his disillusionment with the media.

One entry, written while he was in a drug rehabilitation clinic in 1992, describes how he became addicted to heroin after taking it occasionally for a few years.

"I decided to use heroine [sic] on a daily basis because an ongoing stomach ailment that I had been suffering from for the past five years had literally taken me to the point of wanting to kill myself," he wrote.

"There were many times that I found myself literally incapacitated in bed for weeks vomiting and starving.

"So I decided I feel like a junky as it is so I may as well be one."

Burning

Later in the same entry, he wrote about a time just before his daughter Frances Bean was born when he stopped taking drugs and the stomach pains returned.

"I instantly regained that familiar burning nausea and decided to either kill myself or stop the pain."

"I bought a gun but chose drugs instead."

A "new" Nirvana track is being released

The diaries are being serialised by Newsweek in the US and The Observer newspaper in the UK.

They were started when he was a teenager and cover Cobain's time at the top of the music industry until his suicide at the age of 27.

One entry includes the line: "Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend."

He recorded his angry thoughts about the media and other bands with whom Nirvana were compared, such as Pearl Jam.

"I would love to be erased from our association with Pearl Jam or the Nymphs and other first time offenders," he wrote.

Cobain overdosed on heroin in Rome in 1994, and weeks later was found dead from a gunshot wound in his house in Seattle.

Greatest hits

Some fans have criticised his widow, singer and actress Courtney Love, for selling the rights to the diaries.

Fans also have the chance to hear a previously unreleased Nirvana song, You Know You're Right, which is being included on a forthcoming greatest hits album.

It was the last recording Cobain made with Nirvana before his suicide.

The greatest hits are being released at the end of October, with the diaries released on 4 November.