Charlie Sheen: "Going to Be OK"

Actor hospitalized for drug overdose listed in stable condition

By Joal Ryan May 22, 1998 2:50 PMTags
"He's eating. He's talking. He's aware."

That's a hospital spokeswoman on Charlie Sheen--the 32-year-old party-boy actor admitted for treatment of a drug overdose.

The Platoon star was said to be in stable condition today at Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California.

Said his father, actor Martin Sheen: "My son is very much alive. He's going to be OK."

Doctors say they don't know yet what drug felled the younger Sheen. Blood tests are pending.

Hollywood friends and family have converged at Sheen's bedside: actor Chris Penn, rocker Bret Michaels, included.

Martin Sheen chided some in the media for jumping the gun with erroneous reports of his son's condition.

"I was driving in my car and hearing that Charlie Sheen was dead," he told reporters outside the hospital Thursday. "That's irresponsible."

Other widespread rumors--reminiscent of the coast-to-coast Scott Baio-is-dead whispers of last winter--had Charlie Sheen waylaid by a stroke.

But his father knows drugs are the problem--the problem that his son must confront.

"I'm not doing very good at the moment," Martin Sheen said. "We're all waiting for him to decide what to do. He's an adult."

Martin Sheen said that All in the Family star Carroll O'Connor had contacted his own family. O'Connor lost son Hugh to a drug-related suicide in 1995.

"I'm sorry Carroll didn't get the chance that we have," Martin Sheen said.

Charlie Sheen was taken to the hospital from his Malibu home early Wednesday, officials said. The actor, in the company of his personal trainer, was conscious, but complaining of tingling in his hands and walking difficulties.

Unnamed sources, cited by the New York Post, said that Sheen was "wild-eyed and screaming" upon admittance.

The overdose becomes yet another example of how Charlie Sheen is now more famous for his widely documented bad-boy habits (hookers, booze, drugs) than his increasingly marginalized movie career (from the Oscar-winning Wall Street to the cheap laughs of Money Talks).

He first did the rehab thing in 1990. In 1995, he admitted spending $50,000-plus on Heidi Fleiss' high-priced call girls. And last year, he received probation and a fine after pleading no contest to assaulting a girlfriend.

At that time, it seemed as if even Sheen had had enough. He publically renounced his old ways. Became a born-again Christian. Asked to be called, "Charles."

As he put it: "How many times can you wake up and struggle to remember your name, her name and where you are?"