The Book of Sheen: A Memoir

Sheen recounts his “infamous” 20/20 interview and the immediate aftermath. Before the interview, he watches Baseball Tonight, notices San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson, and, after a phone introduction, absorbs Wilson’s flamboyant rhetoric, which lingers in his mind and surfaces during the interview. The broadcast triggers a rapid public reaction: songs, slogans, and rallies proliferate, and a wave of opportunistic pitches arrives at his house, from consumer products to a proposed live reality show. He describes the environment as chaotic and critiques the commercial exploitation around him, while noting his own role in enabling it. A meeting at Live Nation results in a proposed solo theater tour, which he views skeptically but undertakes.

On the eve of the “pathetic” tour’s opening in Detroit in April 2011, he encounters an enthusiastic crowd outside his hotel. He deals with severe gastrointestinal discomfort that he attributes to stress, schedule, laxatives, and continued testosterone cream use. He recounts resolving a plumbing problem in his room in a brief moment while the two sex workers he has hired are distracted. The next night at the Fox Theatre, the performance collapses; he is booed offstage before intermission. There are still “twenty cities to go” (269).

Charlie returns from the tour in June 2011, noting he stayed sober for six weeks before and throughout the month on the road. Back home, he ends the “Sober Valley Lodge” setup (270), keeps a few loyal friends, and rebuilds his circle. He arranges private visits with adult performers and forms a small, rotating group without intermediaries.

Seeking to blot out recent turmoil, Sheen relies on sex and drugs, and he looks for a new supplier. A contact he nicknames Phil Hinze Jr. becomes both his main source and a fixer who helps de-escalate tensions around the house. His use surges, and he consumes almost two kilograms in under three weeks. Phil relays that the cartel suspects that he is reselling and cuts him off. Charlie decides to keep buying from the original channel while also finding another source, and the pattern continues.

Late in the year, he appears in a minor vanity project and then travels with friends to Colombia. During a stormy drive to a mountaintop church, a local recognizes him and shouts that “the new guy” on his former show “sucks” (273). Sheen treats the moment as an unlikely, memorable coda to a turbulent year.

Sheen describes returning to work before he was ready, accepting a role on Anger Management chiefly to signal employability. He praises showrunner Bruce Helford but notes that his motivation waned after an initially steady stretch. By 2013, he had revived the hard-partying patterns from 2011, surrounding himself with a small circle and pursuing increasingly boundary-testing encounters that, he later acknowledges, became extortion risks. He observes the odd normalcy that followed these nights of “bacchanalian exhilaration” but concedes that secrecy and poor judgment heightened exposure to consequences: Severe headaches, fever, and night sweats culminate in hospitalization, a spinal tap, and an HIV diagnosis.

After shock and grief, he experiences relief at the availability of effective treatment and commits to antiretroviral therapy, crediting his mother and a close friend for steady support during recovery. A brief outing for a burger, a cigarette, and a drive on Sunset marks his first glimpse of ordinary life and of hope. He accepts the need for daily medication and notes a physician’s counsel that treatment may shorten his lifespan slightly, a trade-off he accepts. He declines to relitigate the circumstances that preceded his public disclosure, concluding that those who tried to exploit him did not take what matters most.

After his public disclosure of his HIV status on the Today show, Charlie has an influx of visitors pitching alternative cures and schemes that he rejects in favor of established antiretroviral treatment. The announcement generates a surge of attention labeled by some advocates as the “Charlie Sheen effect” (281), with increased public awareness of HIV and research interest. Sheen reports that organizations then sought to position him as a spokesperson; he participated selectively but resisted becoming a movement figure. When he declined further roles, the outreach cooled.

He attempted to resume normal life but felt detached and attributed the feeling to shock and trauma. He states that he quit crack cocaine immediately after the interview and did not return to it. Alcohol became his remaining coping mechanism. As his depression deepened and the long-term implications of his diagnosis settled in, he relied increasingly on drinking, and he summarizes the next two years as sustained heavy alcohol use.

Seeking relief from scrutiny, Sheen travels frequently to Mexico with friends, favoring unstructured days centered on drinking and companionship. He notes the absence of judgment there and leans on tequila as a daily routine. On one trip, he is accompanied by Amanda, a registered nurse, and Tony T, who both try to manage the risks of his heavy use.

One morning, he experiences pronounced hand tremors and difficulty performing a “simple action,” which he interprets as alcohol withdrawal. The episode alarms his companions, and later that day, Amanda coordinates with security and his physician to move him by private jet to a health resort in Arizona, where he begins medication and stabilizes over several days. Once the tremors subside, he minimizes the episode, returns to Los Angeles, and plans to resume drinking with a different liquor. Amanda issues an ultimatum between “her or the bottle” (286). Sheen chooses alcohol, ending the relationship.

Sheen reexamines his relationship with alcohol by recalling group therapy at Promises in 1998, where he dismissed people whose addiction centered on drinking rather than hard drugs. At that time, he resolved to manage alcohol with discipline, imagining it as a dependable ally rather than a threat. He contrasts that belief with 2017, when he is rarely without a bottle. He begins to question where alcohol ends, and he begins.

One evening, at home with his makeup artist Gabe and friend Perla, he and Gabe improvise hot sauce “shooters” after finishing tequila and turning to cheap scotch. He rushes to a balcony to vomit and realizes that his vomit contains blood. Perla guides him to the bathroom and flushes his system with water until the output clears.

Alone, he confronts the image in the mirror and is reminded of a similar episode in Paris in 1992, when a club manager found him vomiting blood into a hotel sink after a night of heavy drinking and pills. Sheen links the two scenes across decades as moments when friends witnessed his body reject his “lifestyle,” concluding that alcohol became the brush and blood the color with which his life was being painted.

Sheen contrasts drinking with his former crack use, noting that alcohol allowed him to remain moderately sociable, within a self-imposed range of 10 to 15 drinks, which friends jokingly called his “version of the legal limit” (291). Beyond that threshold, an unruly alter ego emerges, producing chaotic episodes that he often learns about only afterward and for which he apologizes without clear memory.

Despite mounting frustrations, he keeps a firm commitment to punctuality and attendance at family gatherings. The frequency of holidays and birthdays makes those obligations feel constant. Events at Emilio Estevez’s home provide more cover because modest drinking occurs there, while his parents’ house is dry and closely watched. His routine becomes preemptive shots at home, additional liquor in his driver Dylan’s limo, and one more drink before entering, masked with breath mints to appear present, if not emotionally engaged. Excuses to step outside grow less credible, and, on one occasion, his father follows him to the car, leading to a confrontation.

Feeling monitored, he escalates his intake, and the volatile persona returns. Sheen acknowledges the harm and his inadequate presence, but he frames attendance as a way to reassure his parents that he “wasn’t toe-tagged in a morgue” (292). He closes by stating that his alcohol limits could shift, but his love for his parents did not.

Charlie frames his drinking through a familiar parable about a flood, identifying alcohol as the flood and helpers as the boats and helicopter he repeatedly ignores. He recalls two intoxicated proposals to adult performers. In the mid-1990s, at his lake house, he removes a pinkie ring while drunk and proposes in a bathroom. After sobering up, he asks Steph to retrieve the ring and apologize. Years later, he proposes again, to another performer he met as a “high-dollar call girl” (293). He announces an engagement party while highly intoxicated, and later, he has his security handle the fallout.

He then recounts an incident in Italy during fittings for The Three Musketeers, in which he is drugged and wakes in an unfamiliar house far from Rome. His valuables are gone, and he hitchhikes back to his hotel, paying the driver for the ride. Despite the scare, he continues to drink. On his birthday in 2017, after a drinking contest with Wade Boggs in Iowa, he blacked out and later wakes in a Dallas hotel with no memory of the airport or flight. He concludes that he has ignored multiple forms of rescue, and it is time to build his “own boat,” noting that danger rises faster than expected.

Charlie’s quiet turning point comes on December 10, 2017. By midmorning, he has already spiked his coffee with whiskey when his daughter Sam calls to ask about an appointment he has forgotten. He refuses to drive after drinking and calls his dependable friend, Tony T., to take them.

During the ride back, Sheen watches Sam in the mirror and reads her silence as disappointment and longing for earlier, simpler drives with her father. He recognizes that “failing [his] children” feels worse than failing himself (295), and this pattern has repeated often enough to erode trust. The moment becomes a mirror in which he sees a man he wants to recover, not through declarations but through action. He concludes that talk has lost its value, and he must act decisively to return to the version of himself that fatherhood requires.

The chapter closes with his reframing of the event: Sam is not a final straw in a long chain of crises but the first positive yield, the initial “harvest” that prompts him to choose responsibility and begin the work of coming home to his family and to himself.

In Chapter 55, Charlie Sheen describes how he takes two valium and drinks three beers on December 11. The next day, he quits drinking “for good” (214). He wishes his eldest daughter a happy birthday.

Sheen reports on stable sobriety and a quieter routine centered on reliability and restraint. He describes a life anchored by punctuality, modest habits, and clearer boundaries, noting that he now presents a single consistent self.

Family frames his outlook. His eldest daughter, Cassandra, and her husband, Casey, have three children: Luna and twins Sara and Jade. The twins are born a few weeks after he stops drinking, so their birthdays align with his sobriety anniversary at eight years. He emphasizes ongoing efforts to support Cassandra and be fully available to his four younger children, Sam, Lola, Bob, and Max. He reflects on his parents and siblings with gratitude, acknowledging that the gift of steadiness they hoped for took time to arrive.

He distances himself from earlier public performances of excess, valuing simple commitments and the ability to say “no.” He summarizes the past eight years as a return to family and personal accountability, stating that he manages his own balance rather than relying on others to carry him. He closes with an image of a secure home life and a forward view rooted in consistency rather than spectacle.