Comedian Rob Delaney says sobriety 'allows me to grieve fully' over young son's death

Comedian Rob Delaney, known for his roles in comedies such as Deadpool 2 and Amazon’s Catastrophe, shared serious thoughts Monday, as he marked 17 years of sobriety.

He recalled that, in 2002, he was in jail and using a wheelchair, where he ended up after crashing into a building while driving drunk. Delaney thanked everyone who had helped him along in his addiction struggle, and he said that being sober has helped him cope with the death of his 2½-year-old son Henry, from a brain tumor in January 2018.

Delaney has spoken before about how difficult the death has been for his family, including wife Leah and four other sons. He added now that he “squeaked by” the tough year. Had he not been sober, he wrote, it “would have been far worse.”

“Sobriety allows me to grieve fully, and grief is an expression of love,” Delany said.

Fans applauded his honesty, many of them citing Delaney as an inspiration for them to get or stay sober.

Delaney and his wife welcomed their youngest son late last year.

“Having another child in no way, shape or form eases the grief of Henry dying,” he told the Sunday Times Magazine in the U.K. in December 2018. “But also having Henry dying doesn’t make our new son any less magical. I want to gobble him up and he deserves our full attention and love, and he grew in the same womb as Henry.”

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