Jeff Conaway suffered from terrible back pain for years before his unexpected death. According to friends, the Grease star’s problems began after he injured himself during the 1972 Broadway show’s rehearsals.

The 60-year-old American actor died in 2011 after being found unresponsive owing to pneumonia and sepsis and being placed in an induced coma from which he never awoke.

Family members and close associates of Conaway reveal facts about his final years in REELZ’s new docuseries Autopsy: Jeff Conaway, including how his worsening physical condition eventually led to his terrible death.

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Jeff’s issues are alleged to have started when he had a back injury while performing in the Greased Lightning dance scene. Conaway played a minor role in the film.

Conaway collapsed and damaged his back while dancing on top of a car. He used painkillers to deal with the agony as a result of the accident, but he developed an addiction. Conaway’s pill addiction followed him for the rest of his life. He became entangled with other substances as well, and the drugs ultimately led to his death.

“Jeff got injured during Grease,” says Conaway’s buddy Mark Mason, “where he would run and jump and drop down to his knees and slide across the floor on his knees.”

“Once you have a back injury, you got a back injury for life,” his sister adds. “Jeffry was always moving and doing things. He was jumping up on the car, he was doing splits, so always reinjuring his back.”

According to CNN, Conaway’s physicians blamed his death on his drug addiction, but the death was declared accidental.

Dr. Michael Hunter, an American pathologist, says in the documentary that “This incredibly high consumption inevitably led to a myriad of overlapping health problems.”

“He was playing a daily game of Russian roulette with his life,” the doctor says, referring to Jeff’s well-documented drug usage.

The doctor then gives a pessimistic assessment of Jeff’s prospects of surviving his induced coma in 2011.

“Even if Jeff had emerged from his coma, I believe he would most likely have been dead within a matter of years at the most,” the specialist says.

Conaway was sleeping on the couch of another of his friends, Jay Gagerman, when he overdosed and died of pneumonia. He was the one who discovered Conaway unconscious and took him to the hospital with the actor’s girlfriend, Vikki Lizzi.

“Jeff was using medication for what it’s supposed to be used for,” Hunter says, but “it just became an ongoing thing that ultimately got out of hand.”

Conaway’s death shocked everyone. He isn’t the only member of the “Grease” cast to pass away. Conaway died in the same year that Annette Charles, who portrayed Cha Cha, died. Charles had lung cancer and died as a result of complications after being taken to the hospital with pneumonia.