It’s dangerous to have an unwell individual and to hand them a media platform. It feeds the delusion of power and uniqueness
THEY SAY cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money. Charlie Sheen should know: he is the highest-paid actor in TV history,earning $1.8 million (€1.3 million) per episode for the hit comedy Two and a Half Men. Sheen, son of Martin and brother of Emilio Estevez, has well-publicised cocaine and alcohol "issues" and over the past few years has been on a not very merry-go-round of rehab programmes, probation orders and anger-management courses.
But he has upped the ante significantly over the past few weeks with a scorched-earth media tour of news programmes. He is very publicly working through a dispute with the producers of Two and a Half Men(Sheen wants his salary doubled) and telling anyone who will listen that both Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are a sham. He talks about battling his addictions with the curative powers of his "tiger blood" and "Adonis DNA".
Pumping sweat and in an agitated state during these interviews, Sheen compares himself to a warlock, boasts that he once survived “banging seven-gram rocks of cocaine” and describes himself as a “rock star”. Every few minutes he interjects “I’m winning!” into his ramblings.
Three times married, with five children, Sheen is currently sharing his Los Angeles home with his “two goddesses” (one is porn star Bree Olsen; the other is model Natalie Kenly, who Sheen described as a “nanny”) and on his just-opened Twitter account (@charliesheen) he has tweeted: “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available, because if you try it once, your face will melt off, you will die and your children will weep over your exploded body.”
He has published a photograph of his watch, calling it “the only watch which keeps warlock time”, and after a Los Angeles court temporarily stripped him of custody of his twin sons he tweeted, “My sons are fine . . . My path is now clear . . . Defeat is not an option.”
Ironically, the most disturbing aspect of this week’s events is that a few days ago Charlie Sheen tested negative in a televised drug test; the test covered marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and alcohol. Both blood and urine tests showed him to be clean.
Kristina Wandzilak, an addiction and intervention specialist, told ABC News: “This is a tragedy that is unfolding on a national stage. If this were a client in my office, somebody who had been tested clean but still had this pressured speech and this grandiose thinking, I would be calling for psychiatric care. It’s a dangerous combination to have an unwell individual and to hand them a media platform. It feeds the delusion of power and uniqueness.”
And on the notion of delusions of power and uniqueness, a few days ago Sheen, during a televised interview, referred to his “epic partying”: “I was proud of it – it was radical. I made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards, all of them, look like droopy-eyed armless children. I exposed people to magic – a magic they would never otherwise have seen in their boring, normal lives. I may forget them but they’ll live with the memory for the rest of their lives – and that’s a gift”.
When told that his fans are concerned about his present state, he depicted them as simple little beings, incapable of comprehending his Awesomeness.
AS FRIENDS ANDfamily consider committing him to psychiatric care, attention is passing to the ethics of the media coverage of Sheen's meltdown and how his celebrity psychosis is being served up as entertainment with little or no regard for his mental health.
Sheen has invited most of the major US networks into his home for interviews, but questions are now being asked of them: are they aiding and abetting the meltdown of a star?
“This is rancid candy,” says the Los Angeles Times. “No one is exercising any discretion, at least the kind that weighs things like taste, proportion and decency instead of ratings points.”
Such is the coverage being afforded the Sheen story that even an Irish angle has been shoehorned into the unfolding drama. Sheen’s grandmother Mary Anne Phelan came from Co Tipperary; relatives in the area have advised the actor to visit Tipp to enjoy the quiet life and avoid the limelight.
Born Carlos Estevez, the actor took his father’s stage surname in honour of the Irish-American archbishop Fulton Sheen. All three of his siblings are actors. Sheen had a gilded upbringing in Malibu, California; schoolfriends included Sean Penn and Rob Lowe. He never finished secondary school, having been expelled for poor grades and bad attendance.
While making a name for himself in early features such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Platoon and Wall Street, he rarely shone as a film actor and is best known now for his role as Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men, the most successful TV comedy of the last decade.
THE SHOW IS essentially an update of The Odd Couple.Sheen plays a privileged, drunken philanderer who enjoys a carefree life in his Malibu beach house before having to take in his neurotic and uptight brother after the latter's acrimonious divorce.
Despite all the gag lines going to his brother, played by Jon Cryer, and his nephew, played by Angus T Jones, Sheen excels as Charlie Harper – not least because the role is based on Sheen’s real-life persona.
Shown in more than 60 countries, Two and a Half Menis the televisual equivalent of easy-listening music. Sheen is not required to do very much, but the character he portrays has become the envy of men worldwide: drinking and bedding supermodels feature regularly.
The $1.8 million Sheen picks up for each episode has shattered previous records. Hugh Laurie, star of House, which screens in more countries than Two and a Half Men, only receives $400,000 (€290,000) per episode.
Following his criticism of the show’s producer Chuck Lorre, whom he referred to as “a contaminated little maggot who can’t handle my power and can’t handle the truth”, the show has been postponed indefinitely. Sheen has just upped his wage demands, saying, “because of psychological distress, it’s three mil an episode – take it or leave it”.
There have been accusations of anti-Semitism in his remarks about Lorre (which Sheen denies). Despite the reported $250 million that the postponement of the show will cost its makers, it is highly unlikely that there will ever be any further episodes of Two and a Half Men.
What is happening to Charlie Sheen now – a combined Britney Spears/Robert Downey jnr/Nick Nolte/Mel Gibson moment – may be excessive even by Hollywood’s standards, but there is a way back if he follows the well-trodden route of lockdown rehab/tearful apology on The Oprah Winfrey Show and goes into media mea culpa mode.
But Sheen has never been the penitential type. There’s the denial: “I had a disease but I closed my eyes and in a nanosecond I cured myself from this ridiculous model of addiction, disease and obsession,” he said last week.
There’s the delusion: “I’ve got magic and I’ve got poetry at my fingertips. I’m an F-18. I will destroy you in the air and I will destroy you on the ground.”
And there’s the disease: a message to his fans reads, “Trust me. Follow me. We’re heading to the Promised Land. I will not let you down. We all win together.”
Charlie Sheen won’t win anything. It seems he’s simply lost his mind.
Curriculum vitae
NameCharlie Sheen, the highest-paid actor in TV history
Current whereaboutsAll over your TV screens, justifying his recent actions, expounding weird theories and shouting out "Winning!" every few seconds.
Previous: The usual. Drink and drugs. Has been arrested on domestic-abuse charges. Once accidentally shot his fiancee. Has overdosed on cocaine. Parole violations. Has been charged with felony menacing and criminal mischief. Has been banned from carrying a gun for the rest of his life.
Anything else?Believes the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 looked like a controlled demolition and thinks the Bush administration may have been responsible for the attacks.
Prognosis:Not good. He's making Mel Gibson look employable.
Recent tweet:After well-known party type P Diddy messaged him with, "Can you please send me your address, I've been dreaming about a party like this all my life!", Sheen tweeted back: "Get dressed my man . . . am sending a driver!"