Charlie Sheen is chronicling how daughter Sami Sheen helped him in his sobriety journey.
“It was December 10, 2017, and by 9 a.m. I was on my third Macallan-spiked coffee,” Sheen, 60, wrote in The Book of Sheen: A Memoir, released Tuesday, September 9. “My phone rang and when I picked up, it was my daughter Sam asking what time we were leaving. S***; her appointment that day had slipped my mind. I’ve never mixed the cups with the wheel, so I called Tony T. to come bail me out of a situation he was all too familiar with. There’s reliable and then there’s that dood.”
He continued, “My man was there in twenty-two minutes, and in very short order we were on the road with 13-year-old Sam in the back seat and the two adults up front. (Well, one adult for sure). Thanks to T, the trip was handled with a combination of precision and grace.”
Sheen explained that Sami was “very quiet” on the drive back to his house, where he watched her from the visor’s vanity mirror and side view on his right.
“I didn’t need to be clairvoyant to know exactly what she was thinking,” he wrote. “Why is Dad not driving-again? Why isn’t it just the two of us in the car like it used to be? When will that moment ever return? When will Dad ever return? I miss him. I missed him too. There was only one thing that felt worse than betraying myself, and that was failing my children.”
He continued, “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. The details of that home were no longer scattered, and at long last I did have all the puzzle pieces to define it.”
The actor — who welcomed daughters Sami and Lola with ex-wife Denise Richards in 2004 and 2005, respectively — noted that while he “left home,” it “never left” him. (Sheen and Richards were married from 2002 to 2006.)
“I knew exactly what had to be done,” he wrote. “Like I’ve always said, life comes down to doers and talkers, and there was really nothing left for me to say — it was time to shut the f*** up and get busy doing. Sam wasn’t my final straw; she was my first harvest. On December 11, I took two Valium and drank three beers. On December 12, I quit drinking for good. Happy Birthday, Cassandra.”
Sheen is also dad to daughter Casandra, whom he welcomed in 1984 with ex-girlfriend Paula Profit, as well as twin sons Bob and Max, 17, whom he welcomed with third wife Brooke Mueller. (Sheen’s first marriage was to Donna Peele from 2995 to 1996.)
The Book of Sheen: A Memoir is out now.
