A person’s story is made up of the journey that brought them to where they are today. This rollercoaster of life means that in order to celebrate the joy in the highs, we have to cling tight to our faith in the lows.
That’s just what actor Kelsey Grammer has learned through his lifetime of tragedy.
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As a child, the ’90s sitcom star had a “spiritual youth,” but a series of unfortunate events made it difficult to keep the faith at such a young age.
At the tender age of 12 years old, cancer took the life of Grammer’s 63-year-old grandfather. Just two years later, his father was shot and killed in a home invasion.
Losing the two most important men in his life in such a short amount of time was a lot to handle at just 14 years old. Still, he processed it by clinging tight to the faith he’d always known.
But the tragedy didn’t stop there.
In 1975, Grammer’s sister, Karen, was raped and murdered. Just five years later, two of his half-brothers died in a diving accident.
The constant heartbreak challenged Grammer’s faith, and at one point he admits, “I probably lost it.”
“There was a time when I abandoned the effort to find a reason to be alive,” he says.
While filming Cheers, Grammer turned to alcohol to numb the pain of his past. It was a destructive choice, and one that has plagued him for a solid chunk of his adult life.
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“I was running away from the feelings that weren’t, you know, as comfortable as I wanted them to do be, and maybe I do have a self-destructive part of me.”
Though he spent some time in and out of rehab, the abuse only became worse. Once his time filming Cheers came to an end, Grammer turned to cocaine for his new escape.
Drunk driving charges landed him in jail before the actor made a conscious and committed effort to get clean and sober for good.
It was around this time when Grammer finally surrendered his life—and everything that was out of his human control—to God.
