Eric Roberts’ Complex Health Journey: From Drug Addiction to a Coma-Inducing Car Crash, as Shared by Sister Julia Roberts.Linh

The Dancing with the Stars contestant was in a car crash in 1981 that left him in a three-day coma

Eric Roberts health journey has been a bit of a whirlwind, but he is prioritizing his fitness for his turn at Dancing with the Stars.

The actor, best known for having over 700 acting credits to his name and being Julia Roberts‘ older brother, is on the newest season of the long-running ABC dance competition, its 33rd, and is paired up with dance pro Britt Stewart.

Now 68 years old, his DWTS gig comes just over 40 years after a harrowing car accident left him with several facial and neurological injuries, not to mention in a three-day coma, which then only exacerbated his drug addiction.

Here’s what he has said about it all.

Recalling how rampant cocaine was during his ascent in Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s, he previously shared with Vanity Fair: “You’d arrive [on the set] in the morning, and they’d send you to the prop truck, where there’d be bowls of cocaine.”

He added: “Everybody from executives to craft service was doing cocaine. I was doing it to the point where my wife said, ‘It’s me or the coke.'”

In 1992, Eric married Eliza Roberts, a year after having a bitter custody battle with ex Kelly Cunningham over their then one-year-old daughter Emma Roberts.

“I did all the psychotropics. I got myself arrested [in 1987 for possession of pot and cocaine and resisting arrest]. I went back to pot. I’ve been a pothead all my life, with several sober breaks I refer to as binge sobriety,” he further shared.

By 1991, when he welcomed Emma and was still struggling with his drug addiction, it had been ten years since his car accident, from driving high on cocaine. He further recalled to VF: “I was in a coma. My speech was very [expletive]. I had to learn how to walk again and talk again. It was really hard.”

Naturally, the drug addiction complicated his relationship with his sister Julia, from whom he was estranged for about a decade until 2004, when her twins Hazel and Phinnaeus were born.

In the memoir he released earlier this year, Runaway Train: Or, The Story of My Life So Far, he wrote: “I wouldn’t be surprised if they suffered from PTSD from when it was dangerous to be around me,” referring to Julia and their other sister, Lisa Roberts.

He emphasized: “Lisa and Julia needed love and protection — instead they got fear and uncertainty.”