so it really depends on your coping skills. addiction is generally about 50% genetic predisposition, which he has, and 50% how do you cope with life and what kind of support system do you have. and do you find prison ever helps somebody? can it be a good thing for him? yeah, this is a great question. and i ve got a patient i m dealing with this right now. is where do you go from a public health problem versus a criminal justice problem? and, obviously, drugs is a public health problem on many levels, from infections to hiv, you know, to all sorts of other things. but for some people, they just don t get it. they don t get the wake-up call. their bottom, the bottom that we talk about, is death. and the only thing that they can do in with regards to intervention is through the legal system or through the medical system where they fry one of their organs like their liver or they end up in jail and that s the only way their going to listen or respond to being possessed or under the inf
douglas was convicted of selling large amounts of meth and coke. before sentencing michael douglas wrote a personal plea to the judge asking for leniency and revealing the private pain of a public family that has experienced addiction and anguish for decades. here s randi kaye. reporter: no red carpet at federal court in manhattan, but that didn t keep the cameras away. oscar-winning actor michael douglas was here to learn the fate of his son, cameron douglas, charged with dealing drugs. a father s plea for mercy in the form of a five-page handwritten letter. i love my son, the actor wrote, but i m not blind to his actions. this was michael douglas last shot at keeping his son out of prison and getting him into rehab. for decades, cameron has been battling drugs and the law. july last year, the law caught up with cameron again. he was arrested here at the trendy hotel in new york city and charged with dealing 500 grams of methamphetamine and 5 kilograms of cocaine. cameron plead
you re a celebrity, you ve got it all. what s your problem? why are you using drugs? it comes down to your specific situation. i have drug addicts that i ve treated that are high-end celebrity that have no coping skills and no ability to deal with life. and they can t deal with just basic day-to-day functions that most of us can. i ve also had people that have had horrific, horrific life sentences, so to speak, where they ve encountered every abuse and trauma known to man, and they re okay. so it really depends on your coping skills. addiction is generally about 50% genetic predisposition, which he has, and 50% how do you cope with life and what kind of support system do you have. and do you find prison ever helps somebody? can it be a good thing for him? yeah, this is a great question. and i ve got a patient i m dealing with this right now. is where do you go from a public health problem versus a criminal justice problem? and, obviously, drugs is a public health problem on many le
intervention is through the legal system or through the medical system where they fry one of their organs like their liver or they end up in jail and that s the only way their going to listen or respond to being possessed or under the influence of the drugs. but in prison, jeff, drugs are still available, things are smuggled in. sometimes. but i would say most of the time, specifically in a federal prison, where he is, which tend to be better disciplined. it s unlikely, not impossible, but unlikely he will have access to drugs, at least according to his father, he has been clean for the past nine months. i mean, one advantage of prison for him is that he will be forcibly restrained from getting more drugs. now, whether that will last when he gets out or whether, in fact, he will contrive to get drugs i mean, remember, he was out on bail and his girlfriend smuggled him drugs in an electric toothbrush. that s why he got his bail revoked. so this is a guy who s very determined to ge
douglas, charged with dealing drugs. a father s plea for mercy in the form of a five-page handwritten letter. i love my son, the actor wrote, but i m not blind to his actions. this was michael douglas last shot at keeping his son out of prison and getting him into rehab. for decades, cameron has been battling drugs and the law. july last year, the law caught up with cameron again. he was arrested here at the trendy hotel in new york city and charged with dealing 500 grams of methamphetamine and 5 kill grams of cocaine. cameron pleaded guilty to the charges. he was facing up to ten years in prison. in dozens of letters to the court, friends and family painted the picture of a boy under pressure, growing up in the shadow of his celebrity father and grandfather. referring to his own father, veteran actor kirk douglas, michael told the judge, i have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.