Michael Douglas’s Cancer Battle

It seems like every week there’s a new Hollywood star or starlet whose bad behavior has led to negative consequences. Drugs, drinking and other illegal behavior serve as a warning to the rest of us. Now, Michael Douglas’s recent cancer diagnosis shows someone who isn’t always in the press for his excesses and yet he attributes his stage 4 throat cancer to his drinking and smoking.  

It Doesn’t Take Addiction to Feel the Effects

It should be a sobering reminder to everyone who has looked the other way when confronted with those warning labels on product packaging, on signs at bars and on advertisements for those products. Douglas is a good reminder that the consequences – whether health or legal – don’t always happen to “someone else.”  

The 65-year-old Douglas has publicly said he feels optimistic about his chances at recovery, he admitted during a recent appearance on Letterman that a biopsy indicated that his cancer was at stage 4, usually a diagnosis that means the tumor has spread beyond the original tumor and is usually impossible to cure. Stage 1 cancer is the lowest level.  

Douglas is undergoing an eight-week process of radiation and chemotherapy treatment for his cancer, which he told Letterman was caused by his drinking and smoking.

Douglas added that his throat had been bothering him for a while, and a multitude of doctors put him through a battery of tests in the early summer, but found nothing. A late-summer biopsy then revealed the cancer. The current treatment plan involves radiation and chemotherapy five days a week every three weeks to rid himself of a walnut-sized tumor at the base of his tongue. 

Treatment at The Canyon

If you or someone you love is in need of drug treatment, call The Canyon at the toll-free number on our homepage. Someone is there to take your call 24 hours a day and answer any questions you have about treatment, financing or insurance.