Aleka's Attic was having problems, their members were fed up waiting for Rio everytime he went out for a movie. Tim Haskins was the first to leave the band.
Rio spent the next four moths traveling between Portland and L.A. and leaving Sue alone. She finally decided to separate from River. She thought it best for their relationship. Sue was very concerned about Rio's drug abuse, about his public persona, and his drinking and drug use, but everytime she tried to talk him about it, he lost
control and became very angry. River thought he was invincible and used to tell Sue,
"What would those twelve-year-old girls with a picture of me above their bed think if they knew?"
In October of 1991, River moved to L.A. to prepare for his next film, "Sneakers". By this time, River had started using one of the drugs he hadn't taken yet, heroin. His friend Josh Greenbaum talked to him about leaving the drugs alone, but he was unsuccessful.
In this film Rio knew Dan Akroyd, who also realized the problem Rio had and tried to help him. Rio decided to lay off heroin.
By the summer of 1992, Rio and Sue had finally split up, and Rio was using more and more drugs. He used heroin again, and still he did not acknowledge the fact that the had a problem. Rio used to phone Martha Plimpton frequently on nights when he felt depressed.
Rio's next film was "Silent Tongue", His drug abuse was not clearly shown in this film because he played a mad person.
But Rio was, like always, there to help his friends. He used to call a drug counselor, Bob Timmins, but never for him, always for his friends.
River signed for his next film, "The Thing Called Love", and earned for this film $1.5 million. By now, the drug use was taking its toll. He was very thin, always morose, and even more important to his career, he was losing his creative edge because of the drugs. He dyed his hair brown for this film and wore brown contact lenses.
In this film, River would work with Samantha Mathis, who would become his last girlfriend. The two fell in love and became inseparable.
The Christmas of 1992 should have been a warning for Rio. He spent it in L.A., buying cocaine and heroine for him and his friends. His close-friend, Flea, was becoming very worried about him. One day at the home of Bobby Bukowski, Rio collapsed after a speedball of heroine and cocaine, and fell into unconsciousness. When he recovered, he was consuming some of his clean vegan food, when Bobby told him,
"I'd rather you just point a gun at your head and pull the trigger. I want to see you become an old man, so we can be old friends together."
Rio broke into tears and swore he would never touch drugs again.
"That's the end of drugs,"Rio promised,"I don't want to go down to the place that's so dark it'll annihilate me".
Rio was falling deeper into depression. He only seemed truly happy when he was acting.
"That's the only time I have security", Rio said. "My self is a bum! My self is nothing! I'm a peon. I'm an idiot. I'm totally removed. I'm in the closet. I'm out of sight. You can't touch me."
On September 6, 1993, Rio and Samantha flew to the village of Torrey, in the Utah desert, so he could begin his new, last, and unreleased film, "Dark Blood".
River had cut his hair very short and had dyed it dark. He had been sober since his birthday two weeks ago, and he felt better than he had in years.
River was working in this film with his favorite actor, Jonathan Pryce, and with Judy Davis, who was not getting on well with Rio. That was not a good thing for Rio who was trying to recover from the drugs.
Things began to go bad on the set. Hard rains began, and it became impossible to work in places. Rio said,
"Somebody's going to die in this film".