Charlie Sheen once did so much cocaine the Mexican cartels cut him off

Leading man Charlie Sheen has taken on plenty of dramatic roles throughout his career, but he’s also had a rather colourful personal life.

The American actor’s struggles with drug abuse have been public for years, with his addiction ultimately leading to his firing from Two and a Half Men in 2011.

Sheen has had several stints in rehab, and between 1990 and 2010, he was convicted of multiple misdemeanors.

But his past isn’t something he shies away from talking about, as the Golden Globe winner is now proudly sober at 60, and has been for eight years.

In a recent interview, though, he opened up about his tumultuous history with addiction, revealing how much cocaine he actually once took.

Speaking to Amelia Adams for Australia’s 60 Minutes this weekend, the movie star—real name Carlos Irwin Estévez—confessed that he was even cut off by a Mexican cartel.

‘The cartel cut you off?’ asked Adams, visibly stunned.

‘They did, they did,’ Sheen confirmed. ‘They had never seen someone acquiring that kind of weight.

‘The only other people that they were delivering that kind of weight to were dealers.’

He added that they ‘thought [he] was on the dealing side’.

Adams then probed: ‘Is it true that you were smoking seven-gram rocks of crack cocaine?’

‘Well, we never took one out and put it on a scale,’ Sheen replied. 

‘But that was the amount that was cooked to get it into that form.’

Seeing the funny side of things, Sheen joked that at one stage he said, ‘We’re going to need a bigger pipe,’ adding: ‘It’s kind of funny, no?’

Amused, Adams acknowledged that it is, indeed, funny, but he’s ‘lucky to be alive’.

‘I know,’ admitted Sheen.

The Spin City star began grappling with drug addiction shortly after his rise to fame.

By 2010, he was the highest-paid actor on television, raking in a staggering $1.8million (£1.3m) per episode of Two and a Half Men. However, within just a year, he’d been given the axe, and things had flipped on their head.

Sheen first entered rehab in 1990, and a long battle lay ahead. He previously admitted that he began drinking excessively to cope with his lifelong stutter, while his other vices included spending thousands of dollars hiring prostitutes.

In 1998, Sheen was hospitalised with an accidental cocaine overdose, with his father turning him in to the cops for violating his probation terms after Sheen was convicted of domestic battery against his ex-girlfriend.

At the time, the star considered it ‘the biggest betrayal you could possibly imagine’.

As he staged a TV comeback, Sheen got sober, and his career began to thrive thanks to multiple prestigious award wins, including four Emmy nominations.

However, his addiction battles began bubbling away beneath the surface, leading to Sheen relapsing with prescription pills and another conviction for domestic violence, this time against his wife.

Having reportedly admitted cocaine use to authorities after trashing a hotel room, he was sentenced to another month in rehab, and in 2011, his CBS contract was terminated. Ashton Kutcher replaced him on Two and a Half Men.

In the years that followed, Sheen worked on his sobriety and his overall physical wellness. He says he gave up alcohol in 2017 and began spending more time with his five children.

Speaking in 2023 about how his life has changed, he said: ‘Next month, I’ll be six years sober.

‘I have a very consistent lifestyle now. It’s all about single dad stuff and raising my 14-year-old twin boys, Max and Bob.’

He added: ‘Now I wake up early, around 4:30 or 5am, get an early jump on the news, work out, answer emails.

‘Then I get the kids up and help them with their morning routine—if you can call it a routine.’

The esteemed actor added to People that he is ‘proud of the choices that [he’s] made and the changes [he’s] made to live a life today that will never look like that mess’ of the past.

‘That was some alien version of myself.’