8 Most Revealing Moments From Charlie Sheen’s Visit With Dr. Oz
Since confirming to the world last November that he is, indeed, HIV-positive, Charlie Sheen has turned over a new leaf — and that leaf includes 4:30 am jogs, homemade protein shakes mixed with pineapple juice, and a quest to cure AIDS once and for all. On Monday, the former Two and a Half Men star appeared in a very special episode of The Dr. Oz Show, where he invited Dr. Oz into his home (and out for a morning run) to discuss where’s he’s at with his addiction recovery and where he’s headed.
Overall, it’s fair to say that unlike Matt Lauer, Dr. Oz handled Sheen with kid gloves and avoided putting the actor in the hot seat too often. The famous cardiac surgeon did ask some pointed questions, but rarely drilled down Sheen’s answers, which meant there were still many concerns that went unexamined. Here are the eight most revealing moments from part one of Dr. Oz’s Charlie Sheen special.
1. Sheen claims he quit drinking the day after he made his big announcement on the Today show…
More than a few eyebrows were raised (including Lauer’s) last fall when Sheen revealed that — despite his HIV status and nearly chronic trips to rehab for drugs and alcohol — he was still drinking on the regular. Apparently, however, Sheen got the message that this was not OK and quit the very next day.
“It just didn’t fit in. Every morning I’ve been out here shooting baskets, swimming, doing yoga. I do something different every day,” Sheen said of going off the sauce. “What’s great about this routine is that it closes all the gaps. There’s no room for [drinking]. I can’t get up at 4:30 with a blazing hangover. It just doesn’t go together, but the times I feel the best about not drinking is in the morning. You wake up and you don’t have to deal with the day— you embrace it.”
2. And it wasn’t hard at all.
Dr. Oz was clearly a bit skeptical of Sheen’s miraculous recovery from alcohol addiction and asked if it was hard to stop drinking. Spoiler alert: Sheen said it wasn’t.
“This time, no,” the formerly highest-paid actor on TV quipped. “It was just turning off a switch.” He did admit that he “took a couple of valium for a couple of days” because someone warned him about seizures from withdrawal. “It’s something they give you in rehab in the 1950s,” he jokingly added. Dr. Oz didn’t comment on Sheen self-medicating his alcohol recovery process with prescription painkillers, but did follow up by asking how many times Sheen had “stopped” drinking in the past. “About 2,000,” Sheen laughed. Dr. Oz also didn’t comment on that.
(Photo: Sony Pictures Television)
3. He’s not doing AA.
“There’s no AA application here,” Sheen argued when it came up. “If that works for people, great. God love ‘em, but I just think it’s about honoring myself and especially the work that’s ahead of me. It’s going to be the [most] difficult thing I’ve ever tried to tackle.” All that said, he did readily admit he keeps alcohol in the garage “for guests.”
4. He doesn’t really think he has a gambling addiction.
When Dr. Oz expanded the concept of recovery to other areas of Sheen’s life (though he noticeably left off any reference to a formerly mentioned “sex addiction”), Sheen revealed that though he thinks gambling is similar to drugs, he doesn’t think he is in recovery.
“I view it not as I’m in recovery; I’m in retirement,” he said as he and Dr. Oz stretched their glutes post-jog. “I’m in retirement because I can’t beat these people.” He went on to add some context, noting, “If you lose as much money as I did, you spend the rest of the weekend trying to figure out where to get the money.” Considering just a few years ago he was making $2 million per episode of Two and a Half Men, it’s safe to assume he lost a lot of cash.
5. But there’s still one addiction he hasn’t been able to kick.
Despite his avid exercise and health regime, Sheen admitted to smoking between 25 and 30 cigarettes a day. Dr. Oz noted that his main concern about the cigarettes — besides their negative health implications — is that they often serve as a gateway trigger for other addictions for people in recovery. Sheen responded by clarifying that he only has a few puffs of each cigarette. Um, OK.
6. He had a dream predicting he would get HIV.
Sheen is a big believer in signs and recalled one dream he had when he was 28 that he believes predicted he would contract HIV. “In the dream, I saw myself across the road in a cartoon style caricature and I was pencil thin,” he explained. “I was too thin and I had a very nice black suit on and a red tie, but my head was the size of Charlie Brown’s with a few wisps of hair on the top. It was very vivid. I can see it today. My face was bloated. My eyes were pinched. I was pasty and white and sweaty and I had a sign around my neck on a little gold chain and it said one word on it, written in red.” That word turned out to be AIDS.
Rather than see that as a cautionary moment in his life, Sheen interpreted it as a sort of an unofficial prophecy. “I woke up and I thought, 'Holy crap,’” he said. But instead of changing the behaviors that might have been leading him toward that end, he took it at its face value — as a “message from the universe that this thing was coming.”
7. He admits he might be manic, but he’s not remotely interested in medication.
When Dr. Oz, ever so gently, asked Sheen if he’d ever considered the idea that he might be manic, Sheen didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, I’ve been described as that. I’ve been diagnosed as that, bipolar, whatever. They call it the genius disease, or the genius disorder,” he replied. Still, he’s hardly about to seek treatment. “I would much [rather] embrace some peaks and valleys and keep my mind and my brain and my thoughts in my head than turn into some zombie.” Dr. Oz left that one alone too.
8. His HIV status triggered his drinking.
Though he claims to have it under control now, the 50-year-old star admitted that his diagnosis sparked major anxiety in him that led to increased substance abuse. “Last time, it was just a lot about just kind of to suffocate the anxiety and the fear of what my life was going to become with this condition and getting so numb that I just didn’t think about it,” he explained. “It was the only tool that I had at the time, or so I believed… that would quell a lot of that angst, a lot of that fear.” Drinking, he admitted, “only made it worse,” however. “You wake up severely hungover and the problem is still present.”
In the end, Dr. Oz asked Sheen to describe himself, in three words, before his latest recovery and now. “Hammered, fractured, crazy,” Sheen said. “And focused, sober, healthy.”
Catch Part 2 of Dr. Oz’s Charlie Sheen special on Tuesday.
