Born in 1978, Cameron Douglas grew up in the shadow of not one, but two screen icons.
But instead of living up to that legacy, the son of Oscar winner Michael Douglas and grandson
of Spartacus star Kirk Douglas crumbled, spurning every one of his golden opportunities.
This is the tragic real life story of Cameron Douglas.
In 2019, Cameron Douglas published a memoir titled Long Way Home, in which he pinpointed
the start of his struggles as an incident that happened when he was just seven years
old.
His mother Diandra informed him that his father had been having an affair and was a drug user,
while she held up a bag of marijuana she'd found among her husband's possessions.
The sad thing is, this information probably didn't come as a surprise to young Cameron.
He had gotten used to being around wild Hollywood parties from an early age, as he hung around
the house while his father lived it up with the likes of Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito.
In Long Way Home, he recalled,
"Even as a really young kid, I remember running joints back and forth.
Dad would say, 'Hey, bring this over to your uncle,' and I would, not realizing until years
later what it had been."
Weed smoking wasn't the only adult activity that Cameron witnessed on his father's property.
As he put it,
"As I got older, I would creep from house to house on the compound, climbing balconies
and seeing more than I was supposed to: beautiful grown-ups doing the things that beautiful
grown-ups living lives of excess do."
According to the National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse, kids who see
their parents smoking pot are three times more likely to pick up the habit themselves.
Thus, it's no surprise to learn that Cameron Douglas was only thirteen when he first started
dabbling in weed.
For him, marijuana was very much a gateway drug, as he went on to snort cocaine at 15,
take crystal meth at 17, and later move on to liquid cocaine and heroin.
He is now open about how nearly fatal that personal history was.
"How close were you to dying?"
"Probably pretty close."
In his book, Douglas wrote that he was, quote, "playing a game of chicken" with his life.
By 2004, he was injecting himself with liquid cocaine as frequently as three times an hour.
By this point, his relationship with his father had hit rock bottom.
As he recounted,
"When Dad looks at me, recently, I don't see love; I see concern and sadness and frustration.
When we talk, it's usually a tense interaction about money or the latest way I've disappointed
him."
Cameron Douglas was sent off to boarding school in the sixth grade, a decision that he was
very much against at the time.
It was there that his addiction to marijuana developed, which eventually led to him being
kicked out.
When school officials discovered that he'd been stashing drugs away in his dorm room,
they expelled him.
In 2019, he told Rolling Stone,
"The impetus for a lot of my behavior as a youngster was trying to prove that I was worthy
of that last name.
To me, that meant pushing everything just a little bit further than whoever was willing
to push it furthest."
But he pushed his school too far, and his parents decided they'd had enough, too.
At a loss over how to handle him, they sent him to a wilderness program for wayward teenagers.
Participants had to trek across the deserts of southern Idaho in the hope that they would
come back feeling more appreciative.
For Douglas, marching through the desert wasn't the hardest part, as he was more concerned
with keeping his identity a secret.
He would go into places like this one under his middle name, though eventually everyone
found out he was, so he only had a couple weeks of anonymity.
After a number of failed stints in rehab and futile family interventions, Michael Douglas
reached the end of his rope with his son.
He felt that he had done everything he could at that stage, and he just he wasn't able
to emotionally commit to him.
He told him,
"You're my son.
I love you, but I think you're going to die."
"We had reached the point… had uh, reached the point where I thought I was gonna lose
him."
Cameron had already turned to robbery by this point, so when his dad cut him off financially,
he simply returned to crime.
By his own admission, he took extreme measures to feed his lifestyle.
He started sticking up local stores, using a Glock he'd managed to get his hands on to
rob cashiers at gunpoint.
In Long Way Home, he revealed that he even robbed an elderly woman who was working the
check-in counter at a little hotel, taking her last 20 dollars.
He's referred to that particular incident as the "lowest point" in his life.
"How close did you come to killing someone?"
"It was definitely a possibility, but thank God it never happened."
In 2009, Cameron Douglas' destructive behavior finally blew up in his face, as he was arrested
for selling drugs out of a trendy Manhattan hotel.
He was allegedly procuring his product in California and transporting it to New York
for distribution.
He'd been using his room at the Gansevoort Hotel as a one-stop shop for methamphetamine
and cocaine.
He had large amounts of both of those drugs, and he was also in possession of heroin at
the time.
In court, he expressed remorse to his family, and he admitted that he was a long-time heroin
addict, describing his situation as, quote, "a nightmare of my own making."
Various members of his family wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Berman and asked for leniency,
but he wasn't moved.
In 2010, Douglas was sentenced to five years in prison.
His mother and father were swamped by reporters as they left court, looking stunned.
When Michael Douglas gave his first interview following his son's incarceration, he actually
said that he in fact agreed with the decision.
On the Today show, the father explained,
"I think the court recognized his drug addiction as well as the crime that he committed and
it's an adequate, I think, amount of time for anybody to spend in jail.
And the best part of it is, he will be able to start his life afresh."
Cameron Douglas was placed under house arrest after he was busted in Manhattan, but even
then he wasn't able to stop thinking about the drugs that had put him there.
His girlfriend at the time ended up spending seven months behind bars for smuggling heroin
packed inside an electric toothbrush into Douglas' house.
But that was just the beginning.
The year after he began his prison term, Douglas was caught dealing drugs behind bars.
Unfortunately for him, he wound up back in front of the very same judge that sentenced
him in the first place.
Douglas wrote to Judge Berman ahead of his hearing, claiming that he was deeply ashamed
of his actions and was, quote, "truly ripe for positive reform and real achievement."
But Berman wasn't buying it.
Despite the fact that federal officials had only asked for two additional years, the judge
added another four and a half to Douglas' sentence, calling him, quote, "reckless, disruptive
and non-compliant."
When Douglas was arrested for dealing drugs from his hotel room in 2009, he was looking
at a decade behind bars at the very least.
His crime carried a minimum 10-year sentence, and a maximum of life behind bars.
The only reason he got off with a five-year sentence was because he agreed to cooperate
with agents of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in identifying other drug offenders.
Or, in prison parlance, he decided to become a rat.
When news of this reached his fellow inmates at the Federal Correction Institute in Loretto,
Pennsylvania, it made his life behind bars a living hell.
In 2012, a prison source told the New York Post that an incarcerated mob captain had
put a bounty of sorts on Douglas, offering to pay $100 to anyone that hurt him while
playing flag football.
The celebrity kid soon realized that something was up and chose to drop out of the football
games, but he mysteriously ended up with a busted leg and finger anyway.
The source noted that he broke his femur and that he needed to have a rod inserted.
It sounds as though it was a painful lesson, but Douglas apparently got the message loud
and clear, as he told health services staff that he hurt himself while playing handball.
In 2013, Douglas found himself in trouble over drugs once again.
A prison source told the New York Post that he had failed a mandatory urine test and had
been immediately thrown into solitary confinement as a result.
When he appeared on The View in 2019, the subject of his time in solitary came up, and
he revealed that he had spent a total of two years, quote, "in the box."
The conversation covered the question of whether or not it's good to put someone with an addiction
in solitary confinement.
Surprisingly enough, Douglas expressed that solitary can indeed be useful in certain situations.
"It's definitely a necessary tool if you need to protect either inmate or the people around
him."
However, he also noted that it's an easy system to abuse, and needs a time limit.
Douglas also revealed that he credits his family for helping him get through the darkest
of times.
"I've been blessed thoroughly with a family that has never given up on me."
When Michael and Cameron Douglas sat down with Diane Sawyer in 2019, their interviews
quickly turned into near-therapy sessions.
Both men opened up about how Cameron's drug problems impacted them, their family, and
their relationship.
Michael revealed that he spent some time blaming himself for his son's downward spiral into
abuse.
"You rack your brain, you know, you take it personally in the beginning.
You start blaming yourself."
Michael went on to explain that his marriage wasn't great at the time, so he avoided it
by working too much, when he should've been focusing on Cameron.
Michael would later come to appreciate that his son was climbing the same mountain, only
twice the size.
In a letter to Judge Richard Berman following Cameron's arrest, he wrote,
"I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.
I'm not sure I can comprehend it with two generations to deal with."
Despite the tragic events that have engulfed nearly his entire life, things finally seem
to be looking up for Cameron Douglas.
He was first spotted with New York yoga instructor Viviane Thibes in 2016, not long after being
released from prison.
He and Thibes, who's originally from Brazil, fell hard for each other and things started
moving fast, as they welcomed their first child in December 2017.
They named their little girl Lua Izzy, a subtle nod to her great-grandfather, who was born
Issur Danielovitch and later went by Izzy before adopting the name Kirk Douglas.
When Cameron appeared on The View in 2019, he said that bringing a child into the world
introduced him to a depth of love that he didn't realize existed in himself.
"When you have a child, as you know, it's amazing.
And then also, just a source of inspiration, like no other."
Cameron is also now getting along great with his dad, who reportedly encouraged him to
write his memoir.
In 2017, he admitted,
"My father and I have an amazing relationship.
I love spending time with him, and I will spend as much time with him as I can."
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