Eric Danes Wild Lifestyle: A Deadly Downward Spiral?

To millions of viewers around the world, will forever be known as McSteamy.

But lounging naked in a hot tub, two women by his side, the actor announced a new name: Cocaine Manor.

The title, he said, was his 'porn star name' – the moniker derived from the name of your first pet and the street you lived on as a child.

Whether calling his boyhood dog 'Cocaine' raised eyebrows at the time is not known.

What is known, however, is that drug abuse would haunt Dane throughout his life – causing him to be fired from TV shows and spin off the rails, destroying his 14-year marriage to model , with whom he had two daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14.

Speaking in 2024, Dane admitted: 'If you take the whole eight years I was on Grey's Anatomy, I was f***ed up longer than I was sober.'

On Thursday last week, Dane's family announced that the actor had died at the young age of 53, following a battle with the rare and fatal degenerative disease Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS.

Life expectancy after diagnosis is usually around three to five years – although Stephen Hawking survived for over 50.

Dane was diagnosed less than a year ago, in April 2025, making his descent devastatingly quick.

And friends and family are now left facing the agonizing possibility that Dane's years of hellraising may have played a part in his cruel and rapid decline.

'When Eric was using and abusing, he often never realized the impact it was having on his life and career until it was too late,' a source close to the actor told the Daily Mail. 'Which is the common story, but thankfully he finally realized what he was doing to his life, his career and personal life.

'It wasn't without its struggles as he relapsed and also dealt with depression and a few other things. 

'But the real sad part of everything was once he was now getting back on track; that is when he was diagnosed with ALS. Just another complete gut punch.'

The California-born actor was open about his wild living - beginning in high school, when he first started using marijuana and other drugs.

He 'got sober for the first time' at the age of 26 and, in 2006, at the age of 33, he was cast in Grey's Anatomy - the show that would mark his big break.

Yet at the height of his fame Dane relapsed, and by the time of the Writer's Guild strike of 2007 he was using once more.

In 2009, video was leaked showing Dane in that hot tub, frolicking naked with his wife Gayheart and a former Miss US Teen, Kari Ann Peniche.

Peniche had been stripped of her crown five years earlier after posing for the November 2004 edition of Playboy.

The video, which was filmed several years before it was leaked, did not show the trio having sex, but for 12 minutes they roamed around rooms in Peniche's Los Angeles penthouse, drinking and relaxing together in the hot tub.

Dane and Gayheart sued Gawker, which published the tape, for infringement of copyright and the case was settled out of court in July 2010.

Yet Dane's troubles only got worse.

In 2011, he went to rehab for an addiction to painkillers, which were prescribed for a sports injury.

He admitted in 2024 that his drug use on Grey's Anatomy meant 'things started going sideways for me,' and his character was killed off by producer Shonda Rhimes in 2012.

Dane could do nothing but accept the decision, stating later: 'I wasn't the same guy they had hired, so I understood when I was let go.'

He quickly found work again, playing the captain of a US Navy destroyer in apocalyptic action drama The Last Ship which premiered in June 2014. But he took a hiatus from the show three years later to deal with depression.

The following year Gayheart filed for divorce and the couple separated.

Gayheart would call off the divorce when Dane's ALS was diagnosed in 2024, although she was by then in a serious relationship with the 78-year-old Hard Rock Cafe founder Peter Morton, worth an estimated $800 million.

Dane, meanwhile, was in an on-off relationship for the final three years of his life with filmmaker Janell Shirtcliff.

Yet in his last interview, recorded in anticipation of his death, Dane admitted: 'I will never, by the time anybody sees this, have fallen in love with another woman as deeply as I fell in love with Rebecca.'

So did Dane's wild ways contribute to the condition which robbed him of life so swiftly and so steadily? It's likely we will never know, but science certainly suggests there may be a connection.

A 2015 study published in the International Journal of Medical Reviews found that 'persons with history of drug abuse had an increased risk of ALS,' with the risk among drug users 'at least or about double that among [the] control group.'

Last year a second study, with 9,000 participants, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 'prescribed use of anxiolytics, hypnotics and sedatives, or antidepressants was associated with a 34 percent, 21 percent and 26 percent higher future risk of ALS.'

Dane was always very clear that his checkered past informed his life and was present in every role he ever played.

'I have had some experience getting mixed up with some of the wrong things and I've had struggles with mental health and addiction,' he said in 2024.

'And, you know, I'm always willing to tell my story.

'I'm willing to be a part of telling somebody else's story as long as it's done truthfully.'

And Dane's friends and family are now left wondering what if.

'He never put two and two together, or blamed his party lifestyle on being a reason that he got ALS, but it certainly wasn't anything he ever wanted,' the family source told the Daily Mail. 

'What ALS did eventually do was get him back on track with everyone he loved. 

'It sucks that it took this illness to do that, but he died without any regrets.'