Charlie Sheen says his often bizarre behavior in recent years was due in part to medication.
On Wednesday’s edition of “The Dr. Oz Show,” the actor, 50, explains how after being fired from his sitcom “Two and a Half Men” in March 2011, following months of contentious behavior and rehab, he went through “a very specific period of time that did feel very out-of-body and very just detached from all things real, you know? I felt superhuman during some of that,” he told host Dr. Mehmet Oz, adding, “It was a lot of highs and lows.”
Of his highly public drug- and alcohol-fueled incidents and pronouncements during that time and afterward, Sheen says, “I was taking a lot of testosterone cream” — used to treat low testosterone levels in men — “and I think I went too far with it. So it was kind of, like, a borderline, not a ’roid rage, but a ’roid disengage,” alluding to the lack of impulse control that can be caused by anabolic steroids. Testosterone is the main such hormone produced by the male body, though synthetic steroids abound among athletes and others to artificially promote muscle density.
His behavior at the time — including during a national tour of an idiosyncratic stage show, “My Violent Torpedo of Truth / Defeat Is Not an Option” — now makes him “cringe a little bit,” Sheen says. “There were things about that person that were empowering, that were vibrant, that . . . [made me feel] alive, whether or not I was in some suspended state or not, but I didn’t like the anger. I tend to be victimized by my anger at times.”
Sheen revealed in November that he had been HIV positive for four years and has maintained a successful medical regimen.
