Rob Delaney Opens up 17 Years of Sobriety and Grieving Loss of Son

Rob Delaney is celebrating his 17-year sobriety milestone and reflecting on the “brutal” year of grief he and his family experienced following the loss of his 2-year-old son.

On Monday, the Catastrophe star, whose struggle with addiction began in his mid-teens, took to Instagram with an emotional statement about loss and grief, reflecting on how his sobriety helped him through the most difficult period of his life.

“As of today I’ve been sober 17 years. 17 years ago I was in jail in a wheel chair. Today I’m not,” Delaney began. “I am profoundly grateful to the alcoholics who shined a light on the path for me and helped equip me with the skills to live life well.”

“This has been a brutal year for my family and me. Our first year without our so and brother Henry,” he continued, mentioning the January 2018 death of his 2-year-old son following a battle with brain cancer. “Had I not been sober, it would have been much worse. As it was, I squeaked by. Sobriety allowed me to be a reasonably good dad, husband, and worker through it all. (If you average it out. I think.) Sobriety allows me to grieve fully, and grief is an expression of love.”

“Thank you to everyone who has helped me. I can’t do it alone,” he concluded.

Delaney has been open about his struggles with addiction in the past, opening up in a 2013 interview with the Short List about the moment he realized he struggled with addiction.

“Even when I was 16 years old,” he told the outlet. “I thought, ‘Wow, how come all my other friends can just have fun with it?’ I was starting to black out even then, which is bad. It sucks to wake up and be like, ‘What did I do?’, and then be told and just be disgusted.”

Following the wreck that he mentioned in his post, Delaney entered rehab at 25.

“I asked the police from my hospital bed if I’d killed anyone,” he said. “They said no, but when I realized I could kill other people with my drinking, that paradigm shifted. I was cool if I died, but I just wanted to hurt myself, not other people. And I was already hurting people in relationships, and hotel staff whose beds I’d soaked like a sponge with piss. But when I realized I could end people’s lives, I could kill a family in a minivan, I thought, ‘Oh, OK, time to flip the coin. I don’t want to be that.’”

In the years since, Delaney has gone on to sport a bustling acting career and has welcomed a family with wife Leah. Just eight months following Henry’s death, the couple welcomed their fourth child together.