Charlie Sheen’s new memoir, The Book of Sheen, and an accompanying Netflix documentary contain a string of startling personal revelations in which the actor says he had sex with men while using crack cocaine, consumed vast quantities of drugs and survived episodes that derailed his career.
Sheen recounts in the memoir that some of his male sexual partners were also using crack and that several later attempted to blackmail him, saying the encounters involved consenting adults. He also writes that, at the height of his cocaine use, he took about two kilograms of the drug in under three weeks — a pace that, he says, led a Mexican supplier to refuse to continue selling to him because it looked like resale rather than personal use.
The book traces Sheen’s drug and sexual excesses across decades and through a series of high-profile interventions, arrests and relationships. He writes that an early intervention came in the summer of 1990 when his father, actor Martin Sheen, joined with Clint Eastwood and others to take the then-24-year-old to a Los Angeles treatment center while he was filming The Rookie. Sheen says he escaped the facility to attend a Hawaiian Tropic event with Nicolas Cage after promising a nurse $1 million that he would not return by 9 a.m.
Sheen credits his breakthrough roles in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and Wall Street (1987) with making him a star but says fame supercharged his drug use and risky behavior. He writes he started using cannabis as a child, lost his virginity at 15 to a sex worker in Las Vegas, and escalated to cocaine, ecstasy and, in 1992, smoking crack. The memoir details encounters with Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, for whom he testified after she was arrested, and a series of relationships that included marriages to Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller and the births of children who later became a motivating factor in his recovery.
The memoir also revisits public scandals and near-fatal episodes. Sheen says he injected cocaine in 1998 and overdosed, suffering a stroke that his bodyguard helped save him from. He recounts being drugged and robbed while on a stopover in Rome during a film shoot, and describes episodes in which drug-using partners put him at risk. In explaining his behavior, Sheen writes that much of his life was lived "insensible," and that recalling every detail was difficult; he says the book was written without a ghostwriter.
Sheen’s account touches on conduct previously reported or alleged by others. Denise Richards accused him in a 2006 divorce filing of substance abuse, threats of violence and other troubling behavior; Sheen denied some allegations at the time and writes in his memoir that he will not "stoop down into any of that muck." He also acknowledges public, erratic conduct that culminated in 2011 when he was dismissed from the television series Two and a Half Men and later delivered a series of volatile media appearances in which he used phrases such as "tiger blood" and "Adonis DNA." The memoir recounts that he brandished a machete on a rooftop during that period.
Sheen says he disclosed his HIV diagnosis publicly in 2015 and that discussing his sexual experiences with men in the new documentary felt "f---ing liberating." He told interviewers that he has been sober for nearly eight years and celibate for roughly a decade, saying a 2017 moment when he could not drive his daughter Sami to an appointment while drunk prompted him to change for the sake of his family.
The actor describes cycles of attempted rehabilitation interrupted by relapse, including episodes in which drugs were brought to him while he was in treatment. He recounts a 1993 incident tied to the Fleiss investigation in which police traced payments to her, and episodes involving women who were violent, manipulative or also deep in addiction. Sheen writes that many of those relationships were formed around shared drug habits.
Friends and contemporaries have often reacted skeptically to the prospect of long-term recovery. Sheen quotes himself from an earlier era as saying "I am on a drug — it's called Charlie Sheen," and friends have publicly expressed doubt about promises of sobriety. In the memoir he writes that much of his fifties were spent apologizing to people he hurt and that he does not write from the position of victim.
The Book of Sheen arrives at a time when the actor’s life story remains a cautionary tale of stardom and self-destruction. The memoir and its companion documentary provide Sheen’s version of episodes that have been widely reported over more than three decades but are often disputed or incompletely corroborated. The book is positioned as an "all-access" account in Sheen’s words, though he acknowledges the limits of memory and the selectivity inherent in telling a lifetime of excess.
Representatives for Sheen did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment about details in the memoir. The book adds to a long public record that has included criminal charges, courtroom testimony, television firings and high-profile media appearances, and it underscores the ways addiction and celebrity intersected in Sheen’s life and career.