The Book of Sheen: A Memoir

Chapter 24 is presented as an imaginary six-day journal of Sheen’s first week in rehab. On Day 1, he regrets the Palm Springs detour, learns the nurse’s name is Deb, eats and sleeps, meets an elderly patient named Carl, and reflects on rescuing people and keeping things neat, resolving to spend more time with his daughter. Day 2 brings group therapy; he resists sharing, clashes with a woman he labels “Grumpy-girl,” and admits the exchange briefly gratified him before her history sobers him. Ginger stays at his condo.

On Day 3, Nicolas Cage visits, offers a comic anecdote, and says he will not miss hard drugs. Sheen acknowledges that he lied when he said the same, notes fading hallucinations, witnesses a new patient’s crisis, and worries about sober intimacy. Day 4 is his first Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting, which he dislikes for its rote responses, religious language, and storytelling that romanticizes intoxication. On Day 5, he begins a drug history assignment and meets Rick, a dentist who overdosed on nitrous oxide. He wonders who he will be without substances. On Day 6, he vows to quit gambling, questions the program’s reliance on the Bible, notes that Deb protected his privacy, and closes with modest hopes for others and a tighter plan for himself.

At noon on a Friday, Sheen leaves rehab during post-lunch yard time with a small duffel bag. Familiar with Santa Monica, he walks briskly toward the street. An orderly chases him. Sheen boards a city bus and rides away while several riders recognize him. He later learns the orderly only wanted an “Against Medical Advice” signature and that he did not need to flee.

He gets off near 4th Street, goes into a pawnshop and buys a saxophone for no reason, then sits at Zucky’s diner on Wilshire. He calls his assistant, Scott G, who arrives and helps him call treatment centers. He insists on outpatient terms. He enrolls in a new program in Calabasas, telling himself he left not to get high but to try treatment on his own terms. After thanking Scott, he checks in and meets the head therapist, who asks why he is “trying to kill [himself]” (165). He has no answer.

After rehab, publicly, Sheen seems restored. He headlines the comedy Hot Shots, promotes recent films, poses for a family photo book, shoots Japanese ads, and buys his first home near Malibu, reinforcing the narrative that sobriety has repaired his reputation, as friends like Rob Lowe predicted. Privately, he admits he did not get sober for himself. He feels anxious, performative, and out of place in any “complicated social setting” (167), resentful of AA rhetoric and its pressure to conform. He and his friends try to recreate camaraderie without substances, but the effort feels forced and only heightens their nostalgia.

On August 3, the anniversary of his intervention, he breaks his sobriety at Nicolas Cage’s house by drinking a Foster’s. He resumes drinking covertly, hiding wine in mugs to protect his image, and vows to avoid cocaine. From early 1992 through early 1994, Sheen works continuously, filming sequels to Major League and Hot Shots, The Three Musketeers, The Chase, Terminal Velocity, and Beyond the Law. The pace erodes his control. The chapter closes as his path intersects with Heidi Fleiss, whom the press will call “the Hollywood Madam” (169).

In June 1992, at On the Rox, he learns from Steve Bing that the woman presiding over a table of models is Fleiss, a high-end madam. Sheen begins booking expensive encounters, rationalizing the transactions as a convenient and finding the secrecy intoxicating. His “cocaine boycott” ends, and he pays Fleiss with personal checks. Later, in New York, he pays with American Express traveler’s checks after a night at the Parker Méridien.

In June 1993, while filming The Chase in Houston, he hears that Fleiss has been arrested in a sting. Rumors swirl about her “little black book” (173). Sheen panics over the paper trail he left, and prosecutors secure his videotaped testimony in exchange for immunity. In it, he confirms dozens of payments as purchases of sexual services, a cooperation he soon regrets, feeling he was pressured by threats of a pandering charge.

The case centers on tax evasion; Fleiss receives a heavy sentence, and they never speak again. Media attention is intense, peaking with an Oscar joke at his expense in 1994. He says the lesson was not to write checks, and he refuses to expose other clients, holding to a rule that their stories are not his to tell.

In the summer of 1994, Sheen films Terminal Velocity in Arizona, calling it poor but noting a career-high $6 million payday. Despite “the Fleiss fallout” (177), he maintains lucrative Japanese endorsements for air conditioners, shoes, and cigarettes. During a Parliament commercial in New York, he meets Donna, a model whose calm manner attracts him. After the shoot, he invites her to Los Angeles.

Two weeks later, he proposes while drunk, and Donna accepts. He sets the wedding date for his 30th birthday to simplify remembering the date. Over the year, they shuttle between Orlando and Malibu, meet families, and he bonds with Donna’s father Jim over heavy drinking. Work takes them to Richmond and Baltimore for Shadow Conspiracy, which he later ranks among his worst films.

On location, their relationship seems to go awry. Donna feels unseen, and he feels unappreciated. Sheen senses warnings but avoids postponing the wedding, assuming she would resist. On September 3, 1995, his 30th birthday, they marry in Malibu before the judge who had handled his first arrest.

The wedding quickly becomes a “mess.” Sheen drinks heavily and ends the reception by kicking lawn lights, which he does not remember. The honeymoon opens with an eight-day Bordeaux tour that Sheen chose for wine, rather than the tropical trip Donna preferred. Mid-flight after an argument, Sheen drinks multiple double shots of scotch, accepts a cockpit invitation, dons the captain’s jacket and cap, and briefly flies the Airbus after the copilot disengages the autopilot. He returns to his seat, apologizes, and withholds the story.

The Tahoe leg of the trip is worse. During a limo fight, he throws both wedding rings out the sunroof. A guard later finds them. He and Donna sleep in separate rooms and remain tense. He drinks vodka in his morning juice. He blames himself for many of the conflicts but also notes that they forgot how to be friends. He departs for Mexico City to film The Arrival. Donna joins for two weeks, yet the strain continues. They split before their first anniversary. He praises her “pure class” for never selling their story and closes with regret and conditional maybes.

Sheen warns readers against trying crack cocaine. In 1992, he reconnects with Sandy, a former girlfriend, who calls from a dangerous house full of meth users. He arrives armed, pays $2,000 to clear her debt, and takes her to his Malibu townhouse. She is thin and exhausted and has been smoking cocaine rather than snorting it. Although concerned, he agrees to join her when she produces a pipe. The first hit, coupled with sex, produces an overwhelming euphoria that he says “rewired [his] frontal cortex into light-speed oneness times two” (187).

He concludes that only two paths exist: remain with Sandy and the pipe until it destroys him, or quit entirely. He vows to abstain, tells Sandy that she is welcome, but the drug is not, and they drift apart. About a year later, Tommy Howell calls to tell him Sandy has died, which leaves him grief-stricken, replaying their night together while acknowledging the drug’s power. He keeps his vow not to do it again through the end of 1996, noting that even solemn promises can become “negotiable.”

In 1997 and early 1998, Sheen completes six films and deems five of them “rancid,” crediting only Money Talks, due to Chris Tucker and a supportive ensemble. He arrives to set drunk or high, forcing first-time director Brett Ratner to improvise schedules and, in a last attempt at control, ask him to halve his intake rather than stop.

Sheen agrees. He improves enough to shoot until a 32-hour cocaine nosebleed halts production, and producers threaten to fire him. Sheen sobers briefly, finishes the film, and moves on without deeper self-examination. He rejects therapy and sober companions, deciding instead that the problem is not cocaine itself but the delivery method. He begins to smoke it, linking that escalation to his introduction to crack.

The work that follows is chaotic: a project in Scotland, time in Montreal with Marlon Brando, and a low-budget shoot for Five Aces that he largely misses, prompting a castmate’s joke that the production is four aces and a stand-in. Sheen concludes that his creative drive gave way to an addiction to crack and pornography and that he is ready to “be done with all of it” (191).

Sheen arrives in Arizona for a film exhausted and detached, noting a “bone-dry landscape” that mirrors his condition. He criticizes producers and directors for ignoring his obvious decline and pursuing cheap projects, arguing that his 1997 slate could have been replaced without consequence. The job itself yields nothing, but he leaves with a new dependency: daily injectable Nubain, a synthetic morphine. At a party, he meets Sarah, a registered nurse, who introduces him to Nubain, which she has been stealing from her hospital. He first injects it intramuscularly, then, later, in Los Angeles, intravenously, which he describes as “unlike anything [he had] felt previously” (193). He believes the drug can help him reduce his crack and alcohol intake.

Sarah is also dealing to clients in Phoenix and Tucson. The initial rule to use only when she is present quickly gives way. Through his bodyguard Zip, he arranges FedEx shipments of the drug and uses it when she is away. His usage escalates to about 80 milligrams per day. He accepts that his decisions, not hers, drove the crisis.

Charlie begins a relationship with Jane, a striking woman whose “offbeat” charm initially suits him. In quieter moments, he notices a mean streak but dismisses it. The relationship ends abruptly when she makes inappropriate remarks after seeing a photograph of his teenage daughter. He tells her to leave; a brief struggle follows, after which public accounts portray him negatively. He chooses not to contest the narrative, resolves the matter with a payment, and accepts a restraining order.

About a month later, Jane calls, in violation of the order, and pressures him to meet her. He complies and, afterward, reflects on the encounter as an exercise in power and control rather than reconciliation. A second meeting occurs at his Malibu Lake house. The mood is subdued, and he explains he is in the final days of withdrawing from a powerful opioid-type drug. He is using alcohol and prescribed sedatives to cope, hoping to avoid treatment.

Jane stays through the end of the acute period and then leaves. He emphasizes that if sensational media reports about the earlier incident were accurate, these later meetings would not have occurred, and says that legal constraints kept him from revealing “the truth.”