"I fell asleep in the fire escape": Grant Denyer's pain meds confession
Grant Denyer has opened up about the "horrific" time he was on strong pain medication, which at the peak of his reliance, led him to wander off in only his underwear and socks.
The former Sunrise presenter recalled the incident on the Jess Rowe Show Podcast and how it left his then-girlfriend Chezzi, with "PTSD" after she spent four hours looking for him in the Sydney CBD.
The pair were staying at a hotel in Sydney’s Chinatown when the incident occurred.
“I wanted some scotch one night, for whatever reason, and just went wandering around town in my undies, got lost in the fire escape on the way back to the apartment,” he said in the podcast.
“I did not know where my apartment was and fell asleep in the fire escape.
“It took Chez three or four hours to find me.”
In another part of the interview he opened up on the effects of the medication.
“When you are under the influence of that kind of power of medication and in that much pain, when you close your eyes at night you go into your worst nightmares immediately and it is every night,” he explained.
“So I would come down and think there was a home invasion, I would be crawling down with a broken back to fight off people I thought were there attacking and raping Chez.
“This would happen daily.”
He added that the pain meds left him in such a daze that whenever he woke up couldn't "differentiate what was real and what wasn’t.”
At the time, Denyer had a reliance on both endone and morphine following a monster truck accident in 2008 which left him with a severe spinal injury.
The former Sunrise presenter was training for the Monster Truck Championships at Dapto Showground when the accident occurred, and had only been dating Chezzi for "a couple of weeks", which forced her "straight into carer nurse mode”.
Denyer also opened up about the incident on the couple's podcast It’s All True?
“As soon as you close your eyes you go into your worst nightmares. The things that you are afraid of the most are the first things that happen the moment you fall asleep and you start dreaming.
“It is traumatic as every time you sleep and then when you wake up you can’t tell what is real and what isn’t," he said in 2020.
Chezzi also explained her side of the story and said that when she found him in the fire exit, he was covered in filth.
“It was pretty gross and it broke my heart,” she said.
Despite the challenges, the couple's love has prevailed as the pair have been married since 2009 and share three daughters, Sunday, Sailor and Scout.
Images: Instagram