Name: Charlie Sheen On Overcoming His Addictions | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-09-10T15:01:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Charlie Sheen On Overcoming His Addictions | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Charlie Sheen On Overcoming His Addictions | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-10. Transcript available.

- Welcome back.
- Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
- How was your Mother's Day?
- Mother's Day was yesterday.
- Yeah, how was it?
Did you do anything?
- No, I was traveling.
I was coming here.
- Did you call at least?
- Well, I was going to.
And I was on a plane,
my mom and dad were on a train.
So.
- How can you do that?
- You can't.
- Well, you'll call her probably right after the show.
- Yeah, but I should say here,
happy belated Mother's Day.
- I think that's good, yeah.
Congratulations to you.
Do you have a big family?
It seems like I know you
and I know your brother Emilio,
and your father I've met a couple of times.
Is there a big family or is that it?
- Four kids.
- Four kids.
- Ramon, my sister Renee,
and there's children.
- And are they all in the show business?
Actors, actresses?
- Well, my sister Renee works on West Wing occasionally.
And Ramon was in and out of show business.
- Emilio's an actor.
- Emilio's still in show business.
- And your dad, of course.
- Of course, in show business, yes.
- And you're now back on Spin City,
which is just fantastic.
- Oh, thank you.
- It's going very well, isn't it?
- Thank you, wow.
Thank you.
- And your character, tell them about your character.
You're a deputy mayor.
- Deputy mayor.
- Deputy mayor.
- Yeah.
- What do you want to know?
- Give us a little background on the character.
- Well, he's described as a bad boy who's a good guy.
- Mm-hmm.
- And so--
- And that's sort of, that fits you, I would guess, right?
In a certain way?
- Yeah, yeah.
- A little bit.
Were you nervous about going into the show?
Because it's Michael J. Fox leaving the show,
and then you coming in,
you must have been a little nervous.
- Extremely nervous, absolutely, yeah.
Because if you look at it on paper,
it doesn't make a lot of sense.
- Well, I don't know.
- You know what I mean?
Yeah, Mike and then Charlie, Shane, it just doesn't--
- But it's worked out very nicely, hasn't it?
- It has, yeah.
Yeah, I'm having a blast.
- And congratulations, I understand.
I don't know, how long has it been
that you're now clean and sober?
Speaking of your bad boy days.
- Oh, gosh, I'm, God willing,
less than a month from three years.
- Three years, that's pretty good.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you, thank you.
- And when did this begin where you recognized,
oh, this is more than like a little hobby of mine.
This is, this is, at what age did it,
did it come to you earlier?
Or did it, how old were you when it?
- Yeah, I had an awakening,
or I had a realization in my teens.
- Yeah.
- But I kept pursuing it,
because I kept thinking that maybe I was wrong.
- And through that struggle, through that pursuit,
and make no mistake about it, it is a struggle.
It's quite a struggle. - It is, sure, yeah.
- What have you learned now with this perspective,
three years after?
What do you know now that you didn't know when you started?
- That anything is possible, seriously.
- Anything good, anything bad?
- Yeah, but today it's most things good, you know.
- Well, that's good, yeah.
- Thank you, thank you.
And it's been my experience that people who don't understand this, or have no
personal or second-hand
experience with this kind of pursuit, or addiction, or whatever you want to
call it,
but don't really know the mechanism, and they don't know how hard a person must
struggle to extricate
themselves from that. But it's darn difficult. Do you find that people say, oh,
what's the big deal?
Here, have some wine, that kind of thing?
- Yeah, I mean, there is, you know, occasional pressure. And people say, well,
can't you just have wine with dinner?
- Right.
- And they say, well, I could, but the difference is you guys all go home and
go to bed. I go home,
and then, you know, there's vodka involved, and then the telephone is involved,
and then...
You know, the next thing I know, it's Christmas.
- That's right. And you're not kidding, are you?
- I'm not, no, it's literally December.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And there was, and I used to do jokes about it, you and women who are not
hobbyists.
And does that behavior go hand in hand with the other kind of addiction?
- It's a lot easier to justify, yeah, when you're in pursuit of that insanity,
and living primarily
in fiction, you know.
- And that also is behind you?
- The women thing?
- Yeah. Well, that...
- That kind of category of women. I'm not saying women all together, I'm just
saying, you know...
- Right, right, right, right, the professional pursuit...
- You're back in the amateur ranks.
- Yeah, I am.
- Yeah, I am.
- That's your amateur standing back.
- I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am.
- The other thing that I didn't know about you is you have a daughter who's 17
years old?
- Yes.
- Oh, my goodness.
- Cassandra.
- Well, good for you.
- She's actually be 17 this year.
- 17 this year.
- Yeah.
- So now, living the life you've led, what can you teach your daughter?
- Uh, it's a, it's a pretty, uh, heightened example of, uh, uh, do as I say.
Not as I've done.
- Right.
- You know?
- And are you confident that that will work?
- Well, kids today, they, they, they have to experience, you know, you look at
their influences,
is the internet and MTV and rap music, you know, and it's, uh, kids don't have
a lot of heroes today.
- Right.
- Um, so I think that, uh, I can tell her so much, but ultimately she's got to
do some exploring.
I just hope she doesn't explore as far as some of us did, you know?
- Yeah.
- Uh, and what about guys like Robert Downey Jr. Do you know him at all?
- I, I knew him a little bit in high school.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah, and then since then, um, off and on.
- Do you understand what that is?
Do you know what that is, where, whereas people like myself might not know what
that is?
- Yeah, it's, oh gosh, um, it's hard to comment on it because I'm not him, you
know?
- Right.
- Um, I understand that level of insanity.
Um, I just, uh, what I would say to Robert is that if I can do it, anybody can,
you know?
- Oh, good, good. That's, that's plenty to say right there.
- Yeah.
- Good for you.
- Charlie and I just had some folks over.
- Uh, tell me a story about when you were a kid and how, how old is Emilio?
Is he, you're younger?
- Uh, he's got four years on me.
- Four years older.
- Yes.
- So he's your older brother.
- So when, when you guys were growing up, what was that like?
Did you get along all right?
Was, did he push you around or?
- Uh, yeah, yeah, quite frequently.
Um, uh, he, he was a bit of a bully, but, uh, he was the experimental child.
So, uh, everything, sounds, sounds strange.
Um, everything he didn't get at a particular age, I got at the following age,
you see?
- Yeah. - Um, and we had fights, we had crazy fights and some of them.
- Actually hurting, when it was like the Baldwins, whenever one of the Baldwins,
they just talk
about ugly fist fights that they would have that would go on for an entire
weekend where they would
just beat each other to a bloody pulp for 48 hours.
- Yeah.
- Any, any, it wasn't like that, was it?
- No, it wasn't so much, uh, uh, physical contact as it was, uh, dramatic
intimidation.
- Yeah. - You know?
- Do you have an example of something that comes to mind?
- Uh, there's the Chicken Supreme incident.
- Oh, Chicken Supreme.
- Yes, yes. The, uh, the Jack in the Box item.
- Uh-huh. - Yeah.
- What happened there?
- I, I had finally gotten a date in high school.
It was my first one. Thank you.
Somebody from the math department, and I, um...
My car was in the shop, and I said to him, I said, "Can I borrow your car?"
And, uh, he said no, and I begged, and I pleaded, he still said no.
So I was across the room, and I was holding the Chicken Supreme, you know?
And, uh, and I snapped, and I fired it at him across the room,
and it hit the wall next to his head and exploded.
And, and he got hit with a sandwich shrapnel, you know?
And, uh, and I ran to my room, because I'm brave that way, you know?
- Yeah. - And, uh...
And this part of the story will sound embellished, but it's true.
He kicked open my door holding a chainsaw.
- Wow. - Yeah.
He's saying, "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you."
And I'm screaming, "Take me out of my teenage misery."
Is the chainsaw actually operating at this moment?
Has he fired it up?
No. - Yeah.
Well, I think it was out of gas.
- I did, yeah. - So, so this went on.
Suddenly there's a knock at the door, and the cops are there.
- Mm-hmm. - The neighbor had called the cops.
And so we, we had to pretend everything was cool and, like, embrace in front of
the cops, you know?
Um, and we convinced them, and the cops leave, and I turned to him, and, you
know,
"Sorry about the chicken thing." He's like, "Sorry about the chainsaw."
- It hardly seems comparable to some of the chainsaw, chicken sandwich.
- I know, I know. Can I borrow the car? No.
- Still wouldn't let you have the car? - No, no.
- Wow. - That was the one, that's kind of our legendary fight, you know?
- But those chicken supreme things, they are tasty.
- They are, yeah. - They're damn good-eating.
- Yeah, but they can lead to violence, you know?
- Are you, uh, tell me about being a baseball fan, and you collect stuff, don't
you?
Don't you have a lot of baseball memorabilia?
- I used to collect a lot, yeah. I sold quite a bit of it, like we talked in
the break room.
I'm downsizing, you know? - Yeah, well, that's good.
I think that comes to a point in everybody's life where they look around and
say,
"What do I need all this stuff?" - Exactly.
- Yeah, and do you go to a lot of games? Which is your team?
- I'm a Reds fan and a Yankees fan. - Yeah, yeah.
- And you get to attend a lot of games in California. You're not in California.
Yeah, you're in California. - Yeah, I'm in L.A.
- Yeah, yeah. Not as much anymore, because having done some baseball movies,
I do a lot of signing and responding to Wild Thing a lot, you know?
- Oh, yeah, yeah. You ever caught a foul ball? Ever caught a home run?
- No, I've almost been killed by a few foul balls.
But I made a decision one night to ensure catching a fair ball and a home run
ball.
- Oh, that would be a great thrill.
- Yeah, so I went to Anaheim and I purchased the left field bleachers.
Took some friends now. - What did that run you to buy the left field bleachers?
- They cut me a deal. It was about $7,000.
- Well, that's not so bad, I guess, for a ball game.
- Yeah. - I mean, parking, a couple of beers.
- Sure, yeah. - Yeah.
- So it's you and your buddies in the left field bleachers, and?
- Yeah, the Tigers were in town against the Angels, and we sat through the
entire game as,
I think, five or six balls hit close to the top of the wall.
- Oh, oh. - Not a single home run that night.
- Oh, no. - Nothing.
- Nothing. But it was a good lesson.
- Yeah. - You know, it was a good lesson.
- But still in all, as a fan, you got your money's worth, don't you think?
- I did. - You got to see a game.
- I did, yeah. And I think it's a better story that we didn't get one.
- Yeah, that's right. I think, sure, you got a $7,000 story there, my friend.
- Exactly. - Now, do you have a season finale on Spin City?
Do you have one of those cliffhangers or anything going on?
- Yeah, we do, actually. - You really?
- Yeah. - And what is it?
- Gosh, how much should I give away?
- Well, just right up to the, you know, take us right to the precipice, but don't
jump.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- Okay. There's a shooting involved.
- You're shot? - Yeah, I get shot.
- And you probably live. I guess it's safe to say you probably live, right?
- I do. - You do live.
- Yeah. - So what's the cliffhanger?
- Well, there's some romance with Heather.
- Oh, oh, well, there you go. Well, now you're talking.
- Yeah. - And when does that take place?
Is it this week or next week? - It's next week.
- Next week? Oh, good. Well, I'm sure a lot of folks will be watching.
- I hope so. - Nice to see you. Say hello to Michael for us.
- I will. - Say hello to your family.
- I will. - Charlie Sheen, ladies and gentlemen.
- I'll see you next week.

Charlie Sheen On Overcoming His Addictions | David Letterman

- Welcome back.
- Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
- How was your Mother's Day?
- Mother's Day was yesterday.
- Yeah, how was it?
Did you do anything?
- No, I was traveling.
I was coming here.
- Did you call at least?
- Well, I was going to.
And I was on a plane,
my mom and dad were on a train.
So.
- How can you do that?
- You can't.
- Well, you'll call her probably right after the show.
- Yeah, but I should say here,
happy belated Mother's Day.
- I think that's good, yeah.
Congratulations to you.
Do you have a big family?
It seems like I know you
and I know your brother Emilio,
and your father I've met a couple of times.
Is there a big family or is that it?
- Four kids.
- Four kids.
- Ramon, my sister Renee,
and there's children.
- And are they all in the show business?
Actors, actresses?
- Well, my sister Renee works on West Wing occasionally.
And Ramon was in and out of show business.
- Emilio's an actor.
- Emilio's still in show business.
- And your dad, of course.
- Of course, in show business, yes.
- And you're now back on Spin City,
which is just fantastic.
- Oh, thank you.
- It's going very well, isn't it?
- Thank you, wow.
Thank you.
- And your character, tell them about your character.
You're a deputy mayor.
- Deputy mayor.
- Deputy mayor.
- Yeah.
- What do you want to know?
- Give us a little background on the character.
- Well, he's described as a bad boy who's a good guy.
- Mm-hmm.
- And so--
- And that's sort of, that fits you, I would guess, right?
In a certain way?
- Yeah, yeah.
- A little bit.
Were you nervous about going into the show?
Because it's Michael J. Fox leaving the show,
and then you coming in,
you must have been a little nervous.
- Extremely nervous, absolutely, yeah.
Because if you look at it on paper,
it doesn't make a lot of sense.
- Well, I don't know.
- You know what I mean?
Yeah, Mike and then Charlie, Shane, it just doesn't--
- But it's worked out very nicely, hasn't it?
- It has, yeah.
Yeah, I'm having a blast.
- And congratulations, I understand.
I don't know, how long has it been
that you're now clean and sober?
Speaking of your bad boy days.
- Oh, gosh, I'm, God willing,
less than a month from three years.
- Three years, that's pretty good.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you, thank you.
- And when did this begin where you recognized,
oh, this is more than like a little hobby of mine.
This is, this is, at what age did it,
did it come to you earlier?
Or did it, how old were you when it?
- Yeah, I had an awakening,
or I had a realization in my teens.
- Yeah.
- But I kept pursuing it,
because I kept thinking that maybe I was wrong.
- And through that struggle, through that pursuit,
and make no mistake about it, it is a struggle.
It's quite a struggle. - It is, sure, yeah.
- What have you learned now with this perspective,
three years after?
What do you know now that you didn't know when you started?
- That anything is possible, seriously.
- Anything good, anything bad?
- Yeah, but today it's most things good, you know.
- Well, that's good, yeah.
- Thank you, thank you.
And it's been my experience that people who don't understand this, or have no
personal or second-hand
experience with this kind of pursuit, or addiction, or whatever you want to
call it,
but don't really know the mechanism, and they don't know how hard a person must
struggle to extricate
themselves from that. But it's darn difficult. Do you find that people say, oh,
what's the big deal?
Here, have some wine, that kind of thing?
- Yeah, I mean, there is, you know, occasional pressure. And people say, well,
can't you just have wine with dinner?
- Right.
- And they say, well, I could, but the difference is you guys all go home and
go to bed. I go home,
and then, you know, there's vodka involved, and then the telephone is involved,
and then...
You know, the next thing I know, it's Christmas.
- That's right. And you're not kidding, are you?
- I'm not, no, it's literally December.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- And there was, and I used to do jokes about it, you and women who are not
hobbyists.
And does that behavior go hand in hand with the other kind of addiction?
- It's a lot easier to justify, yeah, when you're in pursuit of that insanity,
and living primarily
in fiction, you know.
- And that also is behind you?
- The women thing?
- Yeah. Well, that...
- That kind of category of women. I'm not saying women all together, I'm just
saying, you know...
- Right, right, right, right, the professional pursuit...
- You're back in the amateur ranks.
- Yeah, I am.
- Yeah, I am.
- That's your amateur standing back.
- I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am.
- The other thing that I didn't know about you is you have a daughter who's 17
years old?
- Yes.
- Oh, my goodness.
- Cassandra.
- Well, good for you.
- She's actually be 17 this year.
- 17 this year.
- Yeah.
- So now, living the life you've led, what can you teach your daughter?
- Uh, it's a, it's a pretty, uh, heightened example of, uh, uh, do as I say.
Not as I've done.
- Right.
- You know?
- And are you confident that that will work?
- Well, kids today, they, they, they have to experience, you know, you look at
their influences,
is the internet and MTV and rap music, you know, and it's, uh, kids don't have
a lot of heroes today.
- Right.
- Um, so I think that, uh, I can tell her so much, but ultimately she's got to
do some exploring.
I just hope she doesn't explore as far as some of us did, you know?
- Yeah.
- Uh, and what about guys like Robert Downey Jr. Do you know him at all?
- I, I knew him a little bit in high school.
- Mm-hmm.
- Yeah, and then since then, um, off and on.
- Do you understand what that is?
Do you know what that is, where, whereas people like myself might not know what
that is?
- Yeah, it's, oh gosh, um, it's hard to comment on it because I'm not him, you
know?
- Right.
- Um, I understand that level of insanity.
Um, I just, uh, what I would say to Robert is that if I can do it, anybody can,
you know?
- Oh, good, good. That's, that's plenty to say right there.
- Yeah.
- Good for you.
- Charlie and I just had some folks over.
- Uh, tell me a story about when you were a kid and how, how old is Emilio?
Is he, you're younger?
- Uh, he's got four years on me.
- Four years older.
- Yes.
- So he's your older brother.
- So when, when you guys were growing up, what was that like?
Did you get along all right?
Was, did he push you around or?
- Uh, yeah, yeah, quite frequently.
Um, uh, he, he was a bit of a bully, but, uh, he was the experimental child.
So, uh, everything, sounds, sounds strange.
Um, everything he didn't get at a particular age, I got at the following age,
you see?
- Yeah. - Um, and we had fights, we had crazy fights and some of them.
- Actually hurting, when it was like the Baldwins, whenever one of the Baldwins,
they just talk
about ugly fist fights that they would have that would go on for an entire
weekend where they would
just beat each other to a bloody pulp for 48 hours.
- Yeah.
- Any, any, it wasn't like that, was it?
- No, it wasn't so much, uh, uh, physical contact as it was, uh, dramatic
intimidation.
- Yeah. - You know?
- Do you have an example of something that comes to mind?
- Uh, there's the Chicken Supreme incident.
- Oh, Chicken Supreme.
- Yes, yes. The, uh, the Jack in the Box item.
- Uh-huh. - Yeah.
- What happened there?
- I, I had finally gotten a date in high school.
It was my first one. Thank you.
Somebody from the math department, and I, um...
My car was in the shop, and I said to him, I said, "Can I borrow your car?"
And, uh, he said no, and I begged, and I pleaded, he still said no.
So I was across the room, and I was holding the Chicken Supreme, you know?
And, uh, and I snapped, and I fired it at him across the room,
and it hit the wall next to his head and exploded.
And, and he got hit with a sandwich shrapnel, you know?
And, uh, and I ran to my room, because I'm brave that way, you know?
- Yeah. - And, uh...
And this part of the story will sound embellished, but it's true.
He kicked open my door holding a chainsaw.
- Wow. - Yeah.
He's saying, "I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you."
And I'm screaming, "Take me out of my teenage misery."
Is the chainsaw actually operating at this moment?
Has he fired it up?
No. - Yeah.
Well, I think it was out of gas.
- I did, yeah. - So, so this went on.
Suddenly there's a knock at the door, and the cops are there.
- Mm-hmm. - The neighbor had called the cops.
And so we, we had to pretend everything was cool and, like, embrace in front of
the cops, you know?
Um, and we convinced them, and the cops leave, and I turned to him, and, you
know,
"Sorry about the chicken thing." He's like, "Sorry about the chainsaw."
- It hardly seems comparable to some of the chainsaw, chicken sandwich.
- I know, I know. Can I borrow the car? No.
- Still wouldn't let you have the car? - No, no.
- Wow. - That was the one, that's kind of our legendary fight, you know?
- But those chicken supreme things, they are tasty.
- They are, yeah. - They're damn good-eating.
- Yeah, but they can lead to violence, you know?
- Are you, uh, tell me about being a baseball fan, and you collect stuff, don't
you?
Don't you have a lot of baseball memorabilia?
- I used to collect a lot, yeah. I sold quite a bit of it, like we talked in
the break room.
I'm downsizing, you know? - Yeah, well, that's good.
I think that comes to a point in everybody's life where they look around and
say,
"What do I need all this stuff?" - Exactly.
- Yeah, and do you go to a lot of games? Which is your team?
- I'm a Reds fan and a Yankees fan. - Yeah, yeah.
- And you get to attend a lot of games in California. You're not in California.
Yeah, you're in California. - Yeah, I'm in L.A.
- Yeah, yeah. Not as much anymore, because having done some baseball movies,
I do a lot of signing and responding to Wild Thing a lot, you know?
- Oh, yeah, yeah. You ever caught a foul ball? Ever caught a home run?
- No, I've almost been killed by a few foul balls.
But I made a decision one night to ensure catching a fair ball and a home run
ball.
- Oh, that would be a great thrill.
- Yeah, so I went to Anaheim and I purchased the left field bleachers.
Took some friends now. - What did that run you to buy the left field bleachers?
- They cut me a deal. It was about $7,000.
- Well, that's not so bad, I guess, for a ball game.
- Yeah. - I mean, parking, a couple of beers.
- Sure, yeah. - Yeah.
- So it's you and your buddies in the left field bleachers, and?
- Yeah, the Tigers were in town against the Angels, and we sat through the
entire game as,
I think, five or six balls hit close to the top of the wall.
- Oh, oh. - Not a single home run that night.
- Oh, no. - Nothing.
- Nothing. But it was a good lesson.
- Yeah. - You know, it was a good lesson.
- But still in all, as a fan, you got your money's worth, don't you think?
- I did. - You got to see a game.
- I did, yeah. And I think it's a better story that we didn't get one.
- Yeah, that's right. I think, sure, you got a $7,000 story there, my friend.
- Exactly. - Now, do you have a season finale on Spin City?
Do you have one of those cliffhangers or anything going on?
- Yeah, we do, actually. - You really?
- Yeah. - And what is it?
- Gosh, how much should I give away?
- Well, just right up to the, you know, take us right to the precipice, but don't
jump.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- Okay. There's a shooting involved.
- You're shot? - Yeah, I get shot.
- And you probably live. I guess it's safe to say you probably live, right?
- I do. - You do live.
- Yeah. - So what's the cliffhanger?
- Well, there's some romance with Heather.
- Oh, oh, well, there you go. Well, now you're talking.
- Yeah. - And when does that take place?
Is it this week or next week? - It's next week.
- Next week? Oh, good. Well, I'm sure a lot of folks will be watching.
- I hope so. - Nice to see you. Say hello to Michael for us.
- I will. - Say hello to your family.
- I will. - Charlie Sheen, ladies and gentlemen.
- I'll see 