Grant Denyer has spoken out on a terrifying incident that left his concerned wife Chezzi searching Sydney’s CBD for her missing husband.
The former Sunrise weather presenter disappeared in only his underwear and socks during the peak of his reliance on painkillers following an accident.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Grant Denyer recalls going missing in Sydney.
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Taking the painkillers while staying at a hotel in Sydney’s Chinatown with then-girlfriend Chezzi, Grant wandered off leading to a four-hour-long search.
“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 recalled on the Jess Rowe Show 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.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he spoke of 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 said.
“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 told Rowe that his wife “has PTSD” from the “horrific” time.
“When you wake up you can’t differentiate what was real and what wasn’t.”
Denyer has previously spoken out about his reliance on both endone and morphine while he recovered from a back injury from a monster truck accident in 2008.
Grant was in training for the Monster Truck Championships at Dapto Showground and was left with severe spinal injuries that took months of recovery.
The injury took place “a couple of weeks” after the couple began dating, “forcing her straight into carer nurse mode”.
He expanded on the challenging time, explaining in 2020 that there was “mad s*** that went on”.
“When I closed my eyes and couldn’t tell the difference between reality and my dream,” he told Chezzi on their 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.”
“The medication was just, it did your head in.”
Chezzi went on to expand on the night Grant went missing in Sydney, explaining that she found him in the fire exit covered in “filth”.
“It was pretty gross and it broke my heart,” she said.
The pair have been married since 2009 and together they have three daughters Sunday, Sailor and Scout.
While competing on Dancing With The Stars in 2022, Grant spoke of how challenging that time was following the injury.
“I’d broken my back and my body was breaking down and I just hit a wall,” Grant shared.
“It was very difficult to climb out of that black hole and I didn’t think I could.
“I wasn’t very well – in fact, I was very unwell.”
Grant said his family “saved my life” after the accident.
He went on perform a “healing” routine following the challenging time and later won Dancing With The Stars: All-Stars.
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