Thursday, March 03, 2011

The disintegration of Charlie Sheen

Yesterday, my husband got his renewed driver's license in the mail. He opened the envelope and shied away from me when I asked to see his picture. I asked, "What's wrong? Is everything ok?" He turned to me and exclaimed, "I LOOK LIKE CHARLIE SHEEN!" I looked at his card and holy crap, he was right. He looks like Charlie Sheen. I wish I could post the picture here, but that's just wouldn't be kosher. So, I'll post a picture of Charlie Sheen and let you draw your own conclusions.

Heck, we've got booze in the fridge, a half-smoked cigar on the desk, and more pairs of women's underwear than you can shake a stick at. It does sound like we're living in Charlie Sheen's house.

All joking aside, I have some conflicting feelings about Sheen. On one hand, I feel sorry for him: everyone on Earth except the man himself can see that he's suffering from some kind of manic delusion that he's a "Vatican assassin warlock" and a "total bitchin' rockstar from Mars" with "Adonis DNA". You can just see him dissolving in front of the whole world. After all this went down, it just makes "Two and a Half Men" read like a documentary of Sheen's life. For all any of us knows, he may have had mental problems his entire life. After all, we only know what the media tell us; we're not privy to his private life, regardless of how many of his coke-fueled sex binges are reported in the news.



On the other hand.... he brought a lot of this on himself. He's a drug addict. He's a sex addict. No one forced him to start "using", a term Sheen decries for its association with the "cult" of Alcoholics Anonymous, and no one forced him to start poking everything with breasts and a pulse. He's irreversibly altered his brain chemistry with the "7 gram rocks [of crack cocaine]" and countless other substances he's smoked, snorted, injected, eaten, and otherwise introduced into his body. He's a hedonist of the highest order.

Maybe the manic persona we're seeing in the myriad interviews is a clean Sheen, the man at his baseline. Maybe he does drugs to keep his "tiger blood" from boiling, or to quiet the Vatican assassin voices in his head. Personally, I think Sheen has always had something wrong with him -- after all, some of the symptoms of (hypo)mania are hypersexuality or engaging in risky sexual behavior, impulsiveness, use of recreational drugs, and squandering of money. He could have been hypomanic his entire life. Whatever the case, I hope Charlie Sheen gets the help he needs.

2 comments:

Jill said...

I feel sorry for Charlie Sheen, too. It's weird having pity on a person who has money, fame, personality, etc. I used to like his character in "Two and a Half Men" but now wonder if it was just a fancy cry for help? Why is his man-whore character with pocketsful of money to dole out to freeloaders and hookers or his constant drinking while watching infomercials, or marriages during booze blackouts amusing on tv yet so sad in real life? In real life I suspect there would be an intervention but afterall, he is an actor so maybe he is just always in character? I hope someone helps him figure it out.

Erin said...

It is interesting to think that we're amused by his alcoholic, womanizing shenanigans on TV, yet act shocked when Sheen becomes the character he portrays...