Michael Douglas’s new memoir, "One Helluva Ride," details his tumultuous personal life, including maintaining relationships with multiple women while dating Catherine Zeta-Jones and having an affair at age 18. The book also recounts living with Danny DeVito during their struggling actor days and Douglas's heavy drug use in college, admitting to taking LSD over a hundred times. Additionally, it explores his complex relationship with his father, the late Kirk Douglas, and reveals how he funded his college education by smuggling marijuana.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-10-06,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
The title of Michael Douglas’ new memoir is “One Helluva Ride,” and the 82-year-old Oscar winner definitely delivers that for readers.
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winner → deliver → readers
In the late ’90s, when Douglas became serious with Catherine Zeta-Jones, she warned him that she wasn’t interested in dating him unless they were monogamous.
“I told her, ‘Wait here, I have to make five quick calls,'” he writes, shocking the “Chicago” star, 57, who exclaimed, “Five?
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who → become → Five
You have to make five calls?!”
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You → have → calls
“I made sure they all lived in different cities,” he writes of the various women he was involved with at the time, “which felt like a respectful way to be nonmonogamous.
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which → make → way
None of them asked for a commitment or even asked what else I was up to.
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I → ask → what
I am sure they were seeing other people, too.”
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they → see → people
Years earlier, Douglas, then an unknown actor, had shared an Upper West Side apartment with another struggling actor named Danny DeVito.
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Douglas → share → actor
The two devised an old-fashioned warning if one or the other was entertaining anyone — a sock on the doorknob.
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one → devise → doorknob
Clearly, Douglas was busy entertaining during this time span, as “there were some periods where Danny found himself living more outside the apartment than in.”
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himself → entertain → apartment
He also had an affair when he was about 18 with a friend of his mother’s.
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he → have → mother
“She was my Mrs. Robinson — she taught me a lot about women and what women liked, and it was very helpful information for a young man,” he writes.
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he → teach → man
“Honestly, ‘The Graduate’ felt like a documentary when I watched it.”
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I → feel → it
Douglas also writes poignantly about his childhood and his father, the late movie star Kirk Douglas, his volcanic temper and his unhappy marriage to Michael’s mother, Diana Dill.
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Douglas → write → mother
“Dad was from the hitting generation, and when he raged, I learned early on to stay away and be quiet.
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I → hit → generation
I became shy and cautious.
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I → become → ?
I rarely smiled or laughed.”
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I → smile → ?
However, Michael notes that his relationship with his father, who passed away at age 103 in 2020, “was transformed in the last third of his life.
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who → note → life
He became my dad in every way, and I became his son…
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I → become → way
We became stronger than I ever could have dreamed.”
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I → become → ?
The star attended college at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he spent part of the time living on a commune and ingesting LSD.
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he → attend → LSD
“I would say that over a three-year period, I took LSD more than a hundred times,” he writes, “but never more than once a week.”
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he → say → LSD
“Because I was a man of restraint,” he cheekily notes.
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he → note → restraint
Surprisingly, Kirk did not pay for college; instead, he gave his son a $10,000 trust fund and said, “From here on in, you’re on your own.”
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you → pay → own
Michael came up with a risky strategy to pay tuition — he became a drug smuggler — using “two beautiful, soft leather Italian suitcases” that his father had given him as a Christmas present.
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father → come → present
The “Wall Street” star figured out that each suitcase held twenty-two kilos of marijuana and “I would fill those suitcases with forty-four kilos of grass, which I could buy for seventy-five dollars a kilo in California and sell for five hundred in New York…I could feel guilty about my part in distributing drugs, but it was the late sixties to early seventies.
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it → figure → seventies
No one needed my help finding their way to drugs.”
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one → need → drugs
He only did the run twice and graduated with no student loans or debt.
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He → do → loans
Douglas writes honestly about his increasing drug use, which was made easy on sets.
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which → write → sets
“There was always one crew member who was the hookup,” he writes.
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he → be → ?
“He could get you anything you wanted…
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you → get → anything
You just went to the prop master or the stunt coordinator, whoever it was for the movie you were filming,
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you → go → movie
they’d hook you up.”
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they → hook → you
He also once did coke with OJ Simpson and Rolling Stone magazine honcho Jann Wenner in the ’70s.
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He → do → 70s
Simpson “whipped out a rolled dollar bill” and offered them coke at Wenner’s apartment.
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Simpson → whip → apartment
Eventually Michael and Wenner’s coke habit worsened.
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habit → worsen → ?
“It was not unusual for us to do a bump while getting ready to go out, another just before dinner, another in the middle of dinner, and yet one more after dinner.”
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us → do → dinner
The “Traffic” star entered rehab in 1992, but not before he had a drunken altercation with Julia Roberts at a Golden Globes party in 1990.
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he → enter → 1990
Douglas produced the movie “Flatliners,” which starred Roberts and her then-fiancé Kiefer Sutherland.
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which → produce → Roberts
“We were at the bar, and Julia had her arm around my son [Cameron, then 13], kind of nuzzling him,” he claims.
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he → have → him
“To me, in that moment, he looked stunned…but I was pretty drunk.”
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I → look → moment
…and 57 more, not listed.
The Aporia
