Jeremy London is revisiting a painful period in his life when he was battling drug addiction while starring on 7th Heaven, one of the most popular TV series among younger viewers at the time.

London, 52, discusses those dark days in the new six-part Investigation Discovery documentary series Hollywood Demons.

The first episode, “Stephen Collins, America’s Dad,” focuses on the sexual misconduct allegations against 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins that surfaced in 2012.

Two years later, Collins admitted to PEOPLE in a statement that he’d had inappropriate sexual conduct with three female minors between 1973 and 1994.

London is one of two former 7th Heaven costars who appears in the episode; the other is Kyle Searles, who played the recurring character Mac.

“I can’t say that working on 7th Heaven was a very positive experience for me,” London says. “I left 7th Heaven because I got fired.”

London — who had previously been a series regular on I’ll Fly Away from 1991 to 1993 and Party of Five from 1995 to 2000 and also appeared in the 1995 cult-classic film Mallrats — joined the main cast of 7th Heaven as Chandler Hampton in 2002 during the 7th season. By 2004, things started to fall apart.

“Working on 7th Heaven, my wife [then girlfriend Melissa Cunningham] and I, we were driving up the 405, and things got stupid, and we were yelling and screaming over something that we shouldn’t even have been fighting over,” London says. “And that literally in that moment changed everything.”

As the episode points out, he was arrested for alleged domestic violence, and the incident resulted in media reports, London recalls, “saying that I beat up women, that I was some kind of, like, woman abuser.” He adds: “But because of that, I got turned into a, people were saying really horrible things about me. And all of a sudden, I was a bad person when I wasn’t. And so of course I started doing everything I could not to, um… I’m sorry.”

At this point in the conversation, London stops and breaks down in tears before getting up and leaving the room. In voiceover, he talks about he aftermath of the firing, which happened the same year as the car incident.

“Hollywood abandoned me and chose to believe lies about me,” London says. “I think one of the strangest things about the business is the world is watching always, and it wants to eat you. And it wants you to fail.”

London, who was married to Cunningham from 2006 to 2011 and wed Juliet Reeves in 2014 and shares one son with both women, made headlines for domestic violence charges in 2012 and 2018. In 2010, he claimed that a group of men kidnapped him in Palm Springs, Calif., and forced him to drive around for 12 hours while using drugs.

London says in the episode that his own experiences with Hollywood scandal led him to initially give Collins the benefit of a doubt amid the stories of sexual misconduct.

“At first, I was hearing buzzing of it, but I was not putting it with my Stephen Collins because there’s not a chance in hell my Steve Collins is being accused of these things,” London says. “You don’t accuse saints of this. My defense was that I was put in the same position, and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Something happened,” London adds. “I don’t know what happened. You’re messing with somebody I love and care about. And to see anybody messing with him still makes my blood boil.”

“It’s tough. It’s hard,” he adds. “I’m a dad, first and foremost, above everything else. And so my first thoughts always go to the children. Steven Collins would be a dead man if that was my child.”

“Stephen Collins, America’s Dad,” the first episode of Hollywood Demons, premieres Monday, March 24 from 9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT on ID and will stream on Max.