Warning: This piece includes discussion of drug addiction, which some readers may find upsetting.
Charlie Sheen has spoken candidly about why he first experimented sexually with men.
The actor previously addressed the subject, comparing those experiences to ‘flipping over the menu’.
In 2024, the Two and a Half Men star put out his memoir, The Book of Sheen, and also appeared in a Netflix docuseries that explored his life and his battle with addiction.
Sheen explained that the period in which he had sexual encounters with men overlapped with the time he started smoking crack.
The Hollywood star told Good Morning America: “That’s what started it. That’s where it was born, or sparked. And in whatever chunks of time that I was off the pipe, trying to navigate that, trying to come to terms with it — “Where did that come from? … Why did that happen?” — and then just finally being like, ‘So what?’ “So what? Some of it was weird.
“A lot of it was f***ing fun. And life goes on.”
He also discussed the topic on the In Depth with Grant Bersinger podcast, where a clip has recently resurfaced showing him describing the details of that experimentation.
“When people say ‘sex with men’, you immediately think of like butt sex – I mean, sorry to be graphic, but that’s kind of like where the mind goes, right? And it wasn’t that,” the 60-year-old explained in the recently resurfaced clip .
“So, I don’t want to be like, ‘okay, I did this thing, but that part of it didn’t happen’ because it didn’t, you know what I’m saying? And so, I don’t know if that matters, but that’s the only part of it that I’m like, ‘it wasn’t full-fledged, man! It was that s*** like you’ll experiment with in college’, you know? I never went to college, so maybe that explains it.
“But it’s not a shame thing, it’s just kind of like a huh, that’s that’s a bit of a broad category that was more specifically – the curiosity about that was more specific than that.”
Bersinger then asked whether drugs had given Sheen the ‘confidence’ to take those steps, and Sheen replied that he wasn’t sure.
He added: “I’m not going to say, ‘oh, yeah, it was absolutely the drugs’, because there’s two schools of thought – that the drugs, you know, open doors that are already somewhere in that house, or that they create them.
“So I don’t know. It never happened without… without the, you know, insane amounts of of crack.”
If you want friendly, confidential advice about drugs, you can call American Addiction Centers on (313) 209-9137 24/7, or contact them through their website.