Martin Sheen Addresses Son Charlie Sheen’s Struggles With Addiction

Actor Martin Sheen recently addressed his son Charlie Sheen‘s infamous struggles with addiction, citing “ego” as a big part of the problem.

“The best way to heal is to help healing someone else, and it takes one to know one, so you can appreciate what someone’s going through if you’re gone there yourself,” Sheen said, while attending a LA Chefs for Human Rights event.

“One of the great energies of addiction is the ego,” he added, speaking exclusively to Us Weekly. “It gets in the way of everything. When you start serving others, then the ego is removed from the equation.”

“You also have to trust in the community,” he went on to say, referring to how sometimes parents can’t help their children overcome addition alone. “None of us are alone. We choose to be alone sometimes when it’s convenient, but we’re never really alone. There’s always someone we can hook up with or call for help. No one is so isolated that somebody doesn’t know that you’re in trouble.”

He also spoke about the moment Charlie went on the Today show to reveal his HIV diagnosis to the world.

“I think all of us are striving to lead honest lives. That’s a requirement of every human being. It’s most difficult when you are known. The bigger your celebrity, the more difficult it is to lead an honest life because your past is always present,” Sheen explained. “I think today makes it that much harder for people because there’s so little privacy. I think that the idea of [anonymity] is very important to the program, and it has an energy all its own.”

Sheen then spoke candidly about how being in the “public spotlight” is not the only thing that poses a problem for celebrity recovering addicts.

“The ego, the cover, the availability of stuff. It’s bread for destruction, the celebrity’s life,” the Grace and Frankie actor surmised. “So you have to find that thing — it’s like, when you come to that understanding that the only thing that you can ever possess is the thing that you cherish and you give away with love, including your precious time and talent.”

“That’s why volunteering is so important, because that’s the only thing you can ever possess. That’s the only thing we can take with us when this job is over. Yeah, that’s it,” he continued. “The only things you can take with you are the things which you cherish and gave away with love.”

Sheen is so committed to volunteering that it earned him the LA Chefs’ Human Rights Hero Award in 2018, an honor he admitted he “didn’t anticipate” but was happy to accept.