By Greg Evans

Copyright independent

In his new memoir, actor Charlie Sheen opens up about his tumultuous life as one of Hollywood’s most notorious figures.

The Book of Sheen, released on 9 September, documents the 60-year-old’s various drug and sex scandals, as well as his time as one of the industry’s highest-paid actors.

Born into Hollywood royalty, Sheen and his brother Emilio Estevez had an unconventional childhood, growing up on movie sets alongside stars like Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren, and O.J. Simpson.

Sheen’s issues with alcohol and drugs were present from an early age but morphed into a dangerous addiction when he turned his talents to acting.

His career has been the topic of tabloid speculation for decades, but arguably peaked during his infamous dismissal from the Emmy award-winning sitcom Two and a Half Men in 2011.

Now sober, Sheen reflects on his life and troubles in this honest book. He is also the subject of a Netflix documentary, aka Charlie Sheen, that releases on 10 September.

The book begins with Sheen revealing that he nearly died on the day he was born after his umbilical cord became wrapped around his neck.

Sheen explains that the doctor who saved his life was named Irwin Shaybone. In his honour, the future actor’s parents, Martin and Janet Sheen, named the son after him: Carlos Irwin Estévez.

Sheen writes openly about his sex life, claiming that he lost his virginity to a sex worker named Candy in Las Vegas while he was still in high school.

He says that he “borrowed” his father’s credit card, who was asleep in the next hotel room, to pay for the woman’s services. Sheen added that when she saw the name on the card, she asked if he could wake his father for an autograph, which he told her would be “impossible”.

Sheen had just started working with Glennis Liberty as his manager when he made the decision to use the surname his father adopted for acting.

“I’d sat with Pop the week earlier and got his blessing for the name swap. It was a much smoother father-son, Estevez-to-Sheen morph than the one Dad had suffered with his old man. I told him how important it was to honor him by carrying the name forward,” Sheen writes.

His younger brother, Emilio, was already acting and decided to use his birth name, Estévez, so Sheen wanted to honour both of his father’s names when he began his career.

“What I didn’t share with Pop: Using Sheen allowed me to slam the door on the recent academic and athletic failures I felt I was connected to with Estevez,” Sheen writes. “I wasn’t ashamed of the name, but if this was gonna be a fresh start across new horizons, I wanted to sound different when spoken of.”

The actor’s problems with drug addiction are well-documented and were a prevalent source of tabloid headlines for years. Sheen speaks openly in the book about his tribulations with substance abuse, including first smoking marijuana when he was just 11 and being arrested aged 15 after police discovered a bong in his car.

Sheen first tried cocaine while filming the Vietnam war drama Platoon in the Philippines, which he describes became a “hair-on-fire obsession”.

He would later become addicted to crack, having first taken the drug in 1992 with a friend called Sandy, which he says took him to “another galaxy”.

People will claim their greatest feelings in life as “my child’s first steps” or “saving that kid from a fire,” Sheen writes. “To quote Matt Hooper from Jaws: ‘I got that beat.’ Sandy and that drug rewired my frontal cortex into light-speed oneness times two.”

Sheen began dating Denise Richards in 2001 after meeting her on the set of “unfunny indie” comedy Good Advice.

He says their relationship was “professional” during filming, but they hit it off when they were reunited on sitcom Spin City.

At the time, Sheen was sober and the future couple’s first date was spent watching a baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Houston Astros on October 4, 2001.

Sheen said he knew his “dorky date plan” paid off when Richards yelled louder than he did after a home run.

The couple, who married in 2002 and had two children together, divorced in 2005.

Sheen got to know Matthew Perry when attending a drug addiction group that the late Friends actor hosted.

Speaking of the star, Sheen writes: “Matt and I shared a deeper truth we saw in each other—we were both, as Bobby Dee Jay used to say, ‘veterans of the unspeakable.’ (Those who’ve been through it recognise fellow graduates at a glance.)

“I was fascinated by Matt’s ability to turn every frown upside down. I’ve never met anyone who more masterfully used humor as a deflector-shield to keep you just enough over there. I dug every minute we spent together—and over there with Matthew was much better than most people’s front and center.”

Sheen was diagnosed with HIV in 2011 after suffering from “nonstop cluster headaches” and “delirious nightsweats”. He was shocked to discover that his condition was actually HIV, but found some “relief knowing an entire discipline of high-tech medicine was at my disposal to drive that bastard into submission.”

He went public with his condition in 2015, which he now manages with several antiretroviral drugs. He added that he thinks about his illness “once a day for 20 seconds because I have to, that’s the time it takes to eat the poison that tames the evil stowaway”.

Sheen was dismissed from the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men in 2011 for what was described as “dangerously self-destructive conduct”.

However, Sheen claims that it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that were causing his issues on set, as he was cold turkey at the time.

“What I chose not to quit was the testosterone cream that I was slathering on in mind-altering gobs like a f***ing Pond’s commercial,” he writes. “After all, it was ‘legal.’ I’d been using it to get my body back into shape, not knowing that at the same time I was being shape-shifted.”

He adds: “That drug is known to metabolize into the identical psych profile an anabolic steroid will produce. Anyone who bore witness to the raging demon I melded with will hopefully glean some clarity for what my state of mind was up against.”

Sheen says that he’s “not making excuses” for his actions but sharing it as a “detail that may have been confused with a laundry list of other potential suspects”.

Sheen had many stints in rehab between the early 1990s and 2010s and was even told to get clean by celebrity friends like Clint Eastwood and Guns ‘n’ Roses guitarist Slash.

However, despite the many public embarrassments his addictions caused him, it was actually a 2017 car ride with his daughter Sami that finally inspired him to change his life for good.

A drunk Sheen had asked a friend to drive him and Sami to an appointment. “There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children,” he writes. “In that car, on that day, with my best friend and a child I adore, I joined Sam in those mirrors and saw a guy who was desperate to finally come home for real,” Sheen writes.

On the day of his eldest daughter Cassandra’s birthday, 12 December, Sheen says he quit drinking for good and has spent the eight years since focused on his family.