MY DRUG HELL
GRANT DENYER REVEALS HIDDEN PAIN BEHIND FAST-LANE SHOWBIZ CAREER
“People ask what depression looks like and probably looking at these smiley TV teeth of mine, that can be the face of depression.”
HOURS after receiving Aussie TV’s greatest accolade, Gold Logie winner Grant Denyer has revealed for the first time the depths of despair to which he sank in the wake of a broken back and a pain pill battle that destroyed his will to live.
“It was a time where I didn’t really give a s--t whether I lived or died. I felt like I had nothing to live for,” he said. “I reckon if I didn’t have my daughter at that particular point, I might not be here.”
In late 2008, the revhead supercar racing driver/TV presenter was left with a broken back after an accident while jumping a Monster Truck over five cars at Dapto Showground.
“I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d be able to walk again so I spent six months lying flat, heavily medicated, trying to let it heal … I didn’t really cope with that emotionally or mentally,” Denyer recalled.
“There are all sorts of traps that come with medications and warnings and no one prepares you for that — it is a hard cycle to get out of. I was just a bit broken, sad, lost.”
Looking back, Denyer, now 40, realises he may have been building dependence on the prescription painkillers.
“I mentally wasn’t well, I was on pain medication for a long time, and I probably wasn’t aware of the effects of that,” he said. “I just didn’t have an education to be able to deal with it. I think I was caught in that trap and a whole whirlwind of emotions that meant I was at my lowest.
Denyer was stuck in that trough for a long, long while — and nobody but his wife Cheryl knew. But then his older daughter Sailor arrived.
“That is the only thing that kept me going at my worst, the fact I had someone that loved me and depended on me, and I could not let her down and I think that is possibly the only thing that got me through.”
Despite everything, Denyer was never diagnosed for what was clearly a serious bout of depression.
“I never let myself be put in a position where somebody could recognise that. I think everyone who suffers from depression does a very good job of hiding it — I thought I was in pain physically, but I think I was a bit more damaged internally than that,” he said.
“It is a bit cleansing and feels healthy to put it out there. People ask what depression looks like and probably looking at these smiley TV teeth of mine, that can be the face of depression. I am only still trying to understand it myself.”
In 2014, a few years after Sailor’s birth, Denyer and Cheryl checked into an upmarket Thai clinic prompting wild claims from Woman’s Day — which were vehemently denied — they were seeking help for methamphetamine addiction.
It was actually exhaustion. Life was still not quite right.
Then Family Feud came along, and on Sunday night Denyer paid tribute to what the show did for him as he accepted the Gold Logie.
“I really wasn’t sure if I’d ever work again or if I wanted to,” Denyer said, tearing up. “I wasn’t particularly in a very good place. I wasn’t very well. I was in a bit of a hole. I was pretty sad. I was a bit lost and Family Feud came along and I was very unwell at that particular time. And Family Feud gave me a ladder out of that hole,” he said.
Family Feud is being rested by Ten but Denyer is in a good place professionally and personally. He and Cheryl celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary this year, Sailor is now 7 and two years ago the family welcomed little sister Scout.
And Denyer does have Ten’s new show Game of Games coming up.
“It’s like maybe Ninja Warrior for families or for the unfit,” he said.
“I like silly telly — there’s not enough silly in life.”