WATCHING CHARLIE DIE

Back in January, when Charlie Sheen trashed the Eloise Suite at the Plaza Hotel in NYC, most of us shrugged it off. After all, for a couple of decades we’ve been in on Sheen’s anti-social behavior, drug addiction and penchant for hookers. Remember Heidi Fleiss? Sheen was one of her best clients. So to hear that he was in a hotel room with a porn star and behaving badly was not really news that jumped off the page. But then came February, and March. Massive cocaine parties, more hookers, police, ex-wives venting publicly about Sheen’s decline, 911 calls, rehab then no rehab – Charlie Sheen is in big trouble. We all know it, but he makes his trouble so entertaining that we forget that his life is at stake.

Talking heads on TV cable programs debated the relative danger Sheen is in. Cocaine addiction is nothing to scoff at. It is a disease that seems to never quite go away once one has it. And if the addict is outrageously wealthy like Sheen, it is one that can easily be fueled and re-fueled. Medical experts seem united in their belief that Sheen is in a state of hypomania. We non-medical types are told that hypomania is a state in which a person is overly-energetic, needs little sleep, has thoughts and expressions of grandeur and has a heightened sense of his own power and creativity. The person also seems to have racing thoughts. Understatement – have you heard Sheen’s rants? Listen:
I could use this space deriding talk show hosts like Alex Jones and Piers Morgan for their soft-peddling, fawning interviews with Sheen, but instead, it seems more relevant to talk about Sheen himself. He’s a smart guy. He understands drug addiction. He knows you do not cure an addiction by closing your eyes “I Dream of Jeannie” style and wishing it away. But he’s so deep into his self-destructive mode that it appears he is beginning to believe his own bullshit.

I like a good rant as much as the next guy – maybe more. Look at the title of my bog. But Sheen’s outbursts are particularly disturbing to me because like many others, I believe we may be watching Charlie die. That’s what addicts do. They die. And I believe he is so far into his disease that he has lost respect for his own life. Ranting about tiger blood, and being a rock star, etc., is really only fear trying to cover itself up in a nice warm blanket of invincibility. At 45, Charlie should know better, but as a 45-year-old drug addict, he has lost all perspective.

I am particularly pissed off about Sheen’s lack of regard for life, maybe because I watched my own mother die last week. I watched her struggle for air to even slightly fill her lungs. I watched her rail against impending death, flailing her arms, coughing unproductively and generally losing the last grasp on her 91-year-old life. So when I see people like Sheen so cavalier about their own lives, it does not sit well with me. And when I see millions of people buying in to his crack-addled rhetoric, I can’t help thinking it’s much like a death watch. It’s a lot like sitting around my mother’s deathbed waiting for her last breath, except Sheen makes it more entertaining. Death as entertainment. Now there’s a concept,right? Further, I’m pissed that I have more regard for Charlie Sheen’s life than he does. I look at the guy and see terminal illness, while he looks in the mirror and sees a guy who is “bi-winning.” It’s disgusting.

Oh well, stay tuned. Charlie will be right back after these messages. Or, maybe not.