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一个家庭的地狱之旅(2)

For a long time I quite honestly thought I just wasn't put together properly, that I didn't have the characteristics necessary for real success in life, says Cameron, who spent nearly eight years in prison, including two in solitary confinement for possession and fighting, before being released in 2016.

I know now that was the addiction talking.

Today Cameron is raising his beloved 22-month-old daughter Lua with longtime girlfriend Viviane Thibes, 41, a yoga instructor, working on restarting his acting career and feeling deep gratitude that his family never gave up on him.

In a new memoir, Long Way Home, excerpted here, Cameron opens up about his harrowing, and ultimately inspiring, journey.

On a breezy summer day in 2004, I'm eating lunch with my friend Erin and Dad on a veranda in Spain when the server tells him he has a phone call. He takes it in the bar.

Suddenly, I hear a high-pitched keening sound: Oh no, oh no. Dad puts down the phone and turns to me, crying.

He says, We've lost Eric. Eric is Dad's half brother, who has overdosed at the age of 46.

For as long as I can remember, Uncle Eric has struggled: with drugs, with Pappy-his father, my grandfather, known to the world as Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend.

I feel enormous pride in Pappy and our whole family, and I'm sure Eric did too, but I know how strange it is to see your family members projected on screens and billboards; how unnerving it is to walk into rooms full of people who know things about you, or think they do.

How do you compete with Kirk Douglas? How do you live in Michael Douglas's shadow? Eric's death hits close to home. Dad was in rehab for drinking and drugging in the early '90s.

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