Charlie Sheen is six years sober and has some thoughts to share about his experience.
In a new interview with People, the 58-year-old actor got candid on his journey and struggles with addiction. “Next month I’ll be six years sober. I have a very consistent lifestyle now. It’s all about single dad stuff, and raising my 14-year-old twin boys Max and Bob,” he revealed.
After many years of hard drinking, substance abuse, and ranting about “tiger blood,” the actor is now ready to put those days behind him and focus on his family.
“Now I wake up early, around 4:30 or 5 a.m., get an early jump on the news, work out, answer emails,” he explained. “Then I get the kids up and help them with their morning routine — if you can call it a routine.”
But even as recently as 2017, Sheen admits he was hitting the bottle hard the moment he woke up. So what changed?
“One morning I’d forgotten my daughter had an appointment I’d promised to drive her to, and I’d already had a couple of pops that day,” he explained referring to his 19-year-old daughter Sami, his child from his marriage to Denise Richards.
“So had to call my friend Tony to take us. We got her there on time, but it broke my heart because she was in the backseat and I could just tell she was thinking, ‘Why isn’t dad driving?’ So I got home and sat with that for the rest of the day. And the next morning I just stopped,” he admitted.
Sheen continues in the interview revealing that he quit drinking cold turkey that very day after already ending his drug addiction.
“I think the first month I was like, I’m going to have give it a month, just see if I feel any better, and if my interactions with those that are closest to me improve,” Sheen said. “And they did. And I’m like, all right, I’m going to go another month. And then it got traction. I had momentum.”
Since then Sheen has made a steady return to the screen and has grown closer to his family. But even with all the ups and downs he always goes back to that fateful moment with his daughter that set him straight.
“I’m proud of the choices that I’ve made and the changes I’ve made to live a life today that will never look like that mess,” Sheen continued. “That was some alien version of myself.”