Charlie Sheen has lived life very close to the edge. In the 1990s, he was bedevilled by controversies around drug use, being hospitalized for cocaine use in 1995, admitting spending $50,000 at Heidi Fleiss’ brothel, and even suffering a stroke after a cocaine overdose in 1998.
Several stints in rehab followed, but his career skyrocketed with his lead role in the hugely popular sitcom Two and a Half Men. Then it all fell apart, and Sheen began making erratic rants about having “tiger blood” and boasting about the prodigious amounts of cocaine he was consuming.
He was fired from the show and, around this time, was diagnosed with HIV, causing a further relapse into drug abuse. But, thankfully, he’s now been clean for years and is telling his tale in a memoir, The Book of Sheen and new Netflix documentary aka Charlie Sheen. They’re being billed as brutally honest and unflinching looks at his past, leaving no stone unturned.
For most people, digging deep into their drug abuse would be excruciating, but Sheen just seems relieved to be able to openly talk about this stuff. And one thing he’s happy to make public: he had drug-fuelled hookups with guys and thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Life goes on
In the Netflix documentary (via Variety), Sheen says it’s “liberating” to reveal his past:
“It’s f**king liberating… [to] just talk about stuff. It’s like a train didn’t come through the side of the restaurant. A f**king piano didn’t fall out of the sky. No one ran into the room and shot me.”
And, while being interviewed by Good Morning America, explained that his crack-fuelled gay escapades were actually kinda cool:
“That’s what started it. That’s where it was born, or sparked. And in whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to navigate that, trying to come to terms with it — ‘Where did that come from?… Why did that happen?’ — and then just finally being like, ‘So what?’ So what? Some of it was weird. A lot of it was f**king fun. And life goes on.”
You know what, fair play to Sheen. It’d be all too easy to write off these encounters as something shameful and embarrassing, but his owning them and admitting he had fun with guys is weirdly uplifting.
After all, millions of guys around the world meet up for random hookups every night – there’s a reason Grindr is so popular – and wouldn’t do that if they weren’t having the time of their lives with each other. So, full credit to Sheen for being open about how much of an awesome experience he had with his “dudes time”.
And hey, if Naked Gun is back, maybe it’s time for a Hot Shots revival!
The Book of Sheen is out on Sept 9, and Netflix’s aka Charlie Sheen premieres Sept 10.
