Oh, Charlie Sheen. Every time I think I'm free, you pull me back in. It's like rubbernecking at the scene of an accident, but the only thing maimed is your mind.
Sheen, who considers himself a "nobleman," visited two morning shows today. On Good Morning America, he responded to rumors he might suffer from bipolar disorder with shock and denial. (Manic depressives the world over heaved a sigh of relief that they did not have to share a diagnosis with him.)After stating that his mind "fires in a way that is not maybe from this particular terrestrial realm," Sheen clarified: "Bipolar? I'm bi-winning. I win here and I win there, now what? I have one gear, go. I'm me. I'm different. I have a different constitution....Dying's for fools."
Deep. He makes Bob Dylan sound coherent.
On the subject of relapse, Sheen had this to say. "No, not going to. Period. The end. I blinked and I cured my brain. Can't is the cancer of happen." I smell a self-help book in his future! And from the sound of this next quote, he's got his bio ready for the dust jacket right now.
I expose people to magic, I expose them to something they're never otherwise going to experience in their normal, boring lives. I may forget about it tomorrow, but they're going to live with that memory the rest of their lives. That's a gift, man.
Twenty five years since Platoon and he's still bringing it. How else to explain the success of Two and a Half Men? It couldn't have anything to do with series creator Chuck Lorre. As Sheen said Thursday on a radio show, "I embarrassed him in front of his children and the world, by healing at a pace that his unevolved mind cannot process.... I've spent close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold, and the gratitude I get is this charlatan chose not to do his job, which is to write." Sheen must be a real superhero to have turned Lorre's Big Bang Theory into gold without even starring in it.
On the Today Show, he explains how he blinked himself sober."I closed my eyes and made it so with the power of my mind. I had to unload 22 years of fiction and I just decided I don't need that any more…the fiction of AA. Silly book written by a broken down fool who was a plagiarist. They think it's one size fits all, but it didn't fit me and I got tired of subscribing to something with a five percent success rate. As a retired gambler, I need better odds than that."
Retired gambler...hey, wait a second. Has he found the solution to addiction? No introspection or humility is required. No painful detox or need to make amends: just retire! (Tiger, are you listening?) But this retirement need not extend to one's career. (Never mind, Tiger.) Oddly enough, Sheen uses the very twelve step program he's just savaged to convince his boss to keep him on. Charlie thinks he's hoisting Chuck on his petard when he reads this passage from AA's Big Book.
And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life— unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.
With a flourish, Sheen throws the book to the floor and says into the camera, "Accept me, Chuck." I think the actor has the right idea about acceptance but perhaps the wrong conclusion about who is, in fact, disturbed. I don't fault him for dismissing the struggle of recovering addicts. He can't help himself. Idiocy is a lifetime job; there's no gold watch and retirement party for that. I don't wish ill on Mr. Sheen. I hope he can survive and thrive. But I also hope that, whatever his next move may be, it involves a vow of silence.
Unless he decides to explain why he called Thomas Jefferson a pussy. I totally want to hear about that.
More Sheen Sandwiches at:
Your Job Could Be Worse
Sorry, Charlie! Sheen Found Drunk
