“For some folks it’s just a function of age,” Robert Downey Jr. tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Rich Cohen, on the topic of beating one’s demons. “It’s perfectly normal for people to be obsessive about something for a period of time, then leave it alone.” When asked about the incident in 1996 in which Downey’s neighbors came home to find the actor passed out in their 11-year-old son’s bed, he tells Cohen this was “an uncommon occurrence for me. Happened to be a very public one. I was not a guy who blacked out.”

READ THE FULL STORY: The Ride of His Life

Talking about his time at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison and the process of returning to his old life, Downey says, “Job one is get out of that cave. A lot of people do get out but don’t change. So the thing is to get out and recognize the significance of that aggressive denial of your fate, come through the crucible forged into a stronger metal. Or whatever. But I don’t even know if that was my experience. It’s funny: five years ago, I would’ve made it sound like I’m conscious of my own participation in seizing the similarities. But so many things have become less certain. I swear to God. I am not my story.”

Downey tells Cohen he’s probably inherited his addictions, which leads to a discussion on his son Indio, a 20-year-old musician who was recently charged with felony drug possession. “He’s his mother’s son and my son, and he’s come up the chasm much quicker than we did,” says Downey. “But that’s typical in the Information Age; things get accelerated. You’re confronted with histories and predispositions and influences and feelings and unspoken traumas or needs that weren’t met, and all of a sudden you’re three miles into the woods. Can you help someone get out of those woods? Yes, you can. By not getting lost looking for them.” After a pause, Downey adds, “Pick a dysfunction and it’s a family problem.”

Cohen speaks with Downey at his home in Malibu, which not only features a giant R placed in the lawn as well as an animal pen with two goats and some alpacas (which he doesn’t know why he has) but is home to his extensive car collection, which includes a Porsche, a Corvette, and a “Ford F150. Bentley given to me in lieu of back-end payment for Iron Man 3. Volvo. That’s a Woody. That’s a 1970 Boss 302 Mustang. That’s a 1970 Mercedes-Benz Pagoda. That’s my dear friend the Audi, whom I’ve had a lovely relationship with since the first Iron Man. It’s an A8. That’s an Audi R7, arguably one of the greatest cars ever made. That’s a Mercedes-Benz wagon. That’s the 2011 VW GTI.” When Cohen asks Downey whether this is a post–Iron Man collection, Downey says, “Are you kidding? Before that, I didn’t even have the GTI.”

On Iron Man, The Avengers, and the resurgence of Marvel Comics, Downey tells Cohen, “I’ve gone from being convinced that I am the sole integer in the approbation of a phenomenon to realizing that I was the lead in the first of a series of movies that created a chain reaction that, if everything didn’t fire the way it was supposed to, there’s no operator, no anything. And you go, O.K., life is doing something here that included me but did not require me. But, yes, that role means a lot. Marvel is kind of like this sacred brotherhood.”