Charlie Sheen says a quiet, tense car ride with his daughter Sami on Dec. 10, 2017, convinced him to get sober after years of drinking and drug use, the actor writes in his new memoir, The Book of Sheen.
Sheen, 60, recounts that at about 9 a.m. that day he had already consumed three "whiskey-laced coffees" and realized he was not sober enough to drive to an appointment with Sami. He asked a friend to take the wheel and says he could feel his daughter’s disappointment. "Sam was very quiet," he writes. "I didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know exactly what she was thinking."
In the memoir, Sheen describes imagining Sami’s thoughts: "Why is Dad not driving — again? Why isn’t it just the two of us in the car like it used to be? When will that moment ever return? When will Dad ever return? I miss him." He writes that there was "only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children," and adds, "Sam wasn’t my final straw; she was my first harvest." The actor says he took two Valiums and drank three beers the following day and has been sober since the end of 2017.
Sheen, a former star of Two and a Half Men, chronicles years of substance abuse in the memoir and places the moment with Sami at the turning point that led him to stop drinking. He shares two daughters, Sami, 21, and Lola, 20, with ex-wife Denise Richards.
The relationship between Sheen and his daughters has been publicly rocky. Sami has said she is not in contact with her father and earlier this year posted a TikTok that used audio from Sheen’s widely replayed 2011 ABC 20/20 interview in which he jokingly downplayed the presence of drugs in his home. Sami overlaid the clip with text saying, "When people wonder why I haven’t spoken to my dad in a year but this is my dad." On her mother’s podcast, Denise Richards & Her Wild Things, Sami said she declined to join a lunch with her father and described their relationship as inconsistent: "For the first 13 years of my life it was pretty bad, and then we were OK for a couple years, and now it’s just, OK."
Richards has previously acknowledged the long-standing complications in the girls’ relationship with their father, saying tensions have existed "from day one." Sami now works as a content creator and has been candid about her estrangement in interviews and social media posts.
Sheen’s memoir arrives amid renewed public attention on his personal life and recovery. The actor attributes his decision to change to that single, painful awareness of failing his child, writing that the moment made clear what "had to be done." He does not detail any formal treatment program in the passages cited but frames the end of 2017 as the beginning of his sobriety.
The Book of Sheen recounts episodes from the actor’s career and personal life, and the Dec. 2017 episode with Sami is presented as the emotional catalyst for a long-sought change. The memoir’s excerpts echo public episodes from Sheen’s past and the ongoing difficult family dynamics that followed his high-profile struggles with addiction and legal and personal controversies.
