Granger Smith (Photo by Micah Kandros)
Granger Smith Opens Up About Losing His Son River
Granger Smith has opened up about the grief he’s experienced after losing his 4-year-old son in a drowning incident four years ago.
Granger explained to Entertainment Tonight that he was using marijuana as a coping mechanism and became dependent.
“I would wake up in the middle of the night many times and … go, ‘I lost my son,’ and then I couldn’t go back to sleep. It was every night, so I would take weed in some form so that hopefully I would sleep all night and it worked.”
Granger became dependent on marijuana and would use it in the morning “in case something happened at breakfast.”
“And then I thought, ‘If I don’t have it, I’m in trouble, and the slideshow’s gonna overtake me.’ And the slideshow was just random images of River, of losing him and whether he’s face down in the pool or I’m holding him, or we’re going to the hospital or the doctor saying, ‘We’re gonna lose him.'”
He also shared that he experienced suicidal thoughts at one point, recalling a time when he was drunk on his tour bus in Idaho one night with a gun in his hand.
“I just wanted to end it all when the weed wasn’t working anymore, and the alcohol couldn’t numb it, and self-help certainly couldn’t help anymore cause it takes a level of strength to self-help. And when you don’t have any strength, what do you do? Maybe the only answer is to end it all because maybe that’s where the peace is. Maybe that’s when you can finally rest in that.”
Granger details his healing journey in his new book, Like a River.
