I’d navigated a 30-year career as an actor, seven of those as the cohost of Dinner & a Movie on TBS. I’d been a tireless community volunteer; published five books, including a New York Times bestseller; and twice been a finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. I had raised a well-adjusted son in Hollywood, maybe the most challenging enterprise of all. And I’d accomplished all of these feats with my sense of humor intact. Now, I faced my Waterloo.

Then, through the miracle of modern science and fortunate to have access to cutting-edge therapies, I was granted a temporary reprieve and have now enjoyed five years of stable health.

Over that time, I set out to rekindle my joie de vivre and, as is my way, turned that journey into a book. The End of My Life Is Killing Me is about my adventures as a terminal patient, including selling merch for a heavy metal band on a European van tour, befriending an angel and—as excerpted in part below—finding myself in the center of the wellness universe.

I clocked signs for the Malibu Wellness Expert; Daily Calm Wellness; the Wellness Club; White Chakra; All’s Well That Ends Well Wellness (I might have made that one up); Iyashi Wellness; Plant Wellness; Well, Well, Well, Wellness (I definitely made that one up); and then my destination: the Quantum 360 wellness center.

A receptionist ushered me through a spacious room furnished with two banks of black leather La-Z-Boy recliners overlooking the kind of panoramic ocean view normally reserved for film studio heads and the surviving members of the Beach Boys. Clients were chillaxing in their chairs, each holding an electronic gadget resembling a Lite-Brite, the classic 1970s kid’s toy. One had a green drink in hand. The receptionist and I made our way to a glass cubicle for my intake consultation with the proprietor of Q360.

I listened intently as he explained how he could harness the quantum field’s regenerative properties and reinstate the optimal blueprint of my biofield. The apparatuses at the club used cutting-edge technology calibrated to repair damaged DNA through tuning in to the 528 Hz frequency, sometimes referred to as “the universal healing tone.” Also available for sale were “grounding” bags of Tesla crystals, purportedly charged with electromagnetic frequencies that provide protection from 5G radiation and, yes, named for the inventor Nikola Tesla.

The proprietor didn’t have a degree in physics, but he did have a jawline you could cut yourself on, along with piercing blue eyes almost identical to the cerulean hue of the Pacific. I dutifully listened and diligently scribbled notes: Something that sounds like interconnectedness! Resonant frequencies! Or did he say “resurrection” infrequently? Two thoughts occurred simultaneously: There are worse places you could find yourself on a Wednesday morning, and it’s possible that the person sitting opposite you is genuinely convinced of the credibility of what he’s peddling, because people subscribe to the flat-Earth theory. Don’t ask if he’s a Flat Earther or about the “activated crystal” on his desk, also available for a princely sum. You don’t want to know the answer.

I was in Malibu because a friend had texted that she knew “a guy with an energy machine and he’s had great results with curing diseases in his garage in Topanga.” Topanga Canyon is one of the few remaining hippie enclaves in Southern California, a tangle of dirt roads and dusty hiking paths where Native American dream catchers hanging from rearview mirrors are as commonplace as writers tapping out screenplays in West Hollywood cafés.

When I didn’t respond to her initial text, she pinged me a few months later to ask if I’d connected with Topanga Guy. By then, I’d forgotten the context and, being single, thought she was referring to a possible date. “I wouldn’t want to date a guy with an energy machine in his garage, so why would I entrust this dude with my life?” was what I wanted to text. But I was worn down by the crush of recommendations I’d received.

My residency in Cancerland had given me an unwelcome-wagon gift: an ever-present nagging suspicion that if I didn’t at least try the outlandish cure, I wasn’t doing everything I could. When I called to schedule, I learned that Topanga Guy had recently married one of Charlie Sheen’s ex-wives and upgraded from his garage to a swank Herman Miller-bedecked office suite.

I want to believe! That was one tagline for the TV series The X-Files. And I wanted to believe that the proprietor was the self-taught scientific savant he claimed to be and that this “resonant light” therapy might be something more than colorful kid’s play.

But when the owner of the Q360 wellness center trained his baby blues on me on that sunny afternoon in Malibu and said, “Diseases are caused by negative thinking; your lung cancer indicates that you’re harboring toxic levels of grief,” I stood up, shaken out of my intimidating language stupor, and said, “No, that’s not true,” although I was experiencing grief, the grief of knowing that I could never get back the time or the $360 I’d paid for that consultation.

I marched out on wobbly legs. My body carried me, but my brain was still bargaining. Should I stay and try it out just to be able to disprove it myself, or, you know, just in case … wasn’t Viagra originally indicated for heart disease?

My friend’s recommendation was just one in a potluck of magical thinking, ancient rituals and speculative remedies that came my way.

Like juicing: If you care anything at all about your health, they say, you need to start juicing. Juicing is the gateway to wellness woo-woo. Juice acolytes claim benefits ranging from improved IQ to increased longevity. Its anticancer properties are so often touted that when I wrote in The New York Times that I’d been given a juicer as a present after being diagnosed, dozens of readers sent photos of abandoned juicers they’d also received. So when my juicer arrived, I hastily unboxed it. It was a super-sleek model, almost sculptural.

I considered the steps I’d have to take to make juice.

I’d need vegetables on hand. This was during a COVID lockdown, and I wasn’t doing much shopping, not to mention that the vegetables considered the most potent elixirs are best ordered in a farm delivery box, which sounded expensive. Also, anxiety making. What to get and how much of it? And: I’d have to take a nap after making my morning coffee, then make the juice, and would need another nap after the exertion of making the juice.

“I give up,” I sighed after my son, Ezra, got a job at a popular local juice bar. Was the universe trying to tell me something? I slunk into the joint. “What’s your most nutritious green juice? Should I have the “Zeus” with ginger and watercress or “Eternal Life” with turmeric and Himalayan shilajit?

He didn’t hesitate. “‘Eternal Life’ sucks, Mom, you don’t want that. Here’s what you want: a Greek coffee. It’s got dates, bananas, cold-pressed coffee, figs, cardamom and cacao.”

I don’t know if a Greek coffee is healthy by any measurable standard, and it doesn’t cure worms in canines or humans, but that combination of ingredients makes me glowy, gives me sugar and caffeine-powered energy. And, it tastes even better when someone else makes it for me, especially my son.

Still, if you ever hear that I’ve hung a shingle for Annabelle’s Greek Coffee Cure with Turmeric, or find yourself in some sun-splashed Malibu office and notice that I’m one of the clients receiving realigning resonant rays of light, please don’t be surprised or disappointed. I still haven’t cycled through a dozen lines of alternative treatments, and I don’t know what lengths I’ll go to when that day comes.

Also, can I interest you in a juicer? Never used, nearly new. I’ve got big medical bills, so I’m letting it go for a good price. I’ll let you have it for a cool million.