Charlie Sheen writes in his new memoir that a drunken car ride with his daughter Sami on Dec. 10, 2017, prompted him to seek sobriety after decades of alcohol and drug use.

In The Book of Sheen, the former Two and a Half Men star recounts that at about 9 a.m. that day he had already consumed three "whiskey-laced coffees," realized he was too impaired to drive and asked a friend to take the wheel. "Sam was very quiet," he writes, and he says he could imagine her disappointment: "Why is Dad not driving — again? ... When will Dad ever return? I miss him."

Sheen, 60, writes that the realization of letting his daughter down felt worse than any self-betrayal and that it forced a change. "There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children," he writes. "I knew exactly what had to be done. Sam wasn’t my final straw; she was my first harvest."

According to the memoir, Sheen said he took two Valiums and drank three beers the following day and then has been sober since the end of 2017. The actor has publicly long acknowledged struggles with substance abuse over many years, and he frames the 2017 incident as the moment that led him to stop using.

Sami Sheen, 21, and her sister Lola, 20, are Sheen's daughters with ex-wife Denise Richards. Their relationship with their father has been described as rocky. Earlier this year, Sami — now an OnlyFans creator — posted a TikTok video lip-synching to a clip from Sheen's 2011 ABC 20/20 interview in which he joked about drugs being in his home. Sami wrote across the video, "When people wonder why I haven’t spoken to my dad in a year but this is my dad," a post that implied continued estrangement.

Sami also discussed the fractured relationship during an April episode of Denise Richards & Her Wild Things, saying she declined to join her mother and sister for lunch with Sheen. "I would rather do literally anything else than go to lunch with my father," she said in a confessional, adding that their relationship "goes in very big chunks" and describing periods when it was "pretty bad."

Denise Richards has previously acknowledged the longstanding complications in her daughters' relationship with Sheen, telling Us Weekly in March that tensions have existed "from day one" but that "things can be up and down, but you can always get through it."

Sheen's new memoir details his tumultuous personal history and public incidents related to substance use and erratic behavior. In The Book of Sheen, he revisits episodes from his past and offers this account of how his relationship with Sami influenced his decision to stop drinking and using.

The actor's claim of sobriety since late 2017 is presented in the memoir as his own account. Sami's recent public statements and social-media posts show the family’s relationship remains strained despite the timeline Sheen offers for his recovery.