Eric Dane got candid about his drug addiction and recovery in his posthumous memoir, My Book of Days.
“The first time I do heroin, I throw up all over the place,” he wrote in the book, published Tuesday, November 3. “Volcanic projectile vomiting. A mind-blowing puke explosion. … It was stunning, awesome. It was an experience.”
Dane recalled promising himself he would be “cautious” about using “smack” after being introduced to the drug in the early ’90s by a friend named Dante.
“We don’t shoot the s***. We’re safe,” he continued. “We do heroin in someone’s apartment. We’re not desperate junkies, living under a bridge. We are responsible. We are so careful.”
Eventually, however, Dane found himself becoming “proficient” in shooting up. By 1997, Dane had weaned himself off heroin and turned to painkillers.
“I discovered them after a sinus surgery,” he recalled. “The prescription the doctor wrote called for six pills a day, with a maximum of 12. I took 40.”
Dane sought out Percocet, which he claimed “mimics the high you get from heroin without the accompanying stabbing.” At one point, he got so “desperate” for pills that he went to the emergency room and began rifling through drawers while the doctor was out of the room. He put a handful of syringes in his pocket.
When the doctor returned, he suggested Dane stay for a seven-day detox. Dane declined and bolted, finding his friends in the waiting room. Back at home, Dane’s friends caught him with the last of his heroin stash and the stolen syringes, and he finally agreed to get help.
The friends help Dane get checked into the ER once again, where he attempted to escape shortly after he began detoxing. He was then brought to a mental health building next to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
“I comprehend that my friends have 5150’d me,” Dane wrote. “I can vaguely hear them … and then I see in my periphery that they’re signing something. I realize that my friends are turning me in. Committing me. They are allowing the hospital to put me on a 72-hour involuntary hold.”
Once evaluated by the doctors, Dane was told he needed “more time” to get clean. Despite his protests, Dane accepted he was a drug addict and went to a state-sponsored treatment center, where he stayed for 88 days.
“Eventually, after five years of using, I gave up drugs because I thought I was going to die,” the actor wrote elsewhere in his memoir. “I had come to a treacherous, dangerous end. … The irony? I’ve come full circle. I’m back on drugs.”
While he had fallen off the wagon before, Dane was referring to the “good drugs” he started taking after being diagnosed with ALS in 2024. “These drugs are saving me. … Previously a necessary evil, drugs are now an essential good,” he wrote.
Dane went public with his diagnosis in April 2025. Less than one year later, he died in February at the age of 53. He is survived by daughters Billie, 16, and Georgia, 14, whom he shared with Rebecca Gayheart.
My Book of Days is available now.
