Charlie Sheen Opens Up About His Disease and Its Stigma

Some time ago, Charlie Sheen admitted that he had been living with HIV, but there is one more detail to the story. It shouldn’t be a disease that locks you from society — the stigmas surrounding it should finally come to an end. One of the actor’s main priorities is to educate people and tell them about his experience with the disease.

“The personal disbelief, karmic confusion, shame, and anger lead to a temporary yet abysmal descent into profound substance use,” Sheen wrote in his letter to the people who are ready to listen to him. “Locked in a vacuum of fear, I chose to allow their threats and skullduggery to vastly deplete future assets from my children, while my ’secret’ sat entombed in their hives of folly (or so I thought).”

Fear and shame may be the first thing one feels when receiving this diagnosis.

“I feel like I’m carrying the torch,” the actor shared in an interview. “Then someone just gives you a bunch of pills and says that you’re still going to live, and you really keep living.” Sheen went on to explain that he accepted this condition “not as a curse or scourge, but rather as an opportunity and a challenge. An opportunity to help others. A challenge to better myself.”

According to the actor, the moment when you change your perception can turn your life around for the better. The disease became a reason to be a better person, to think about life, about others, and to stop parting.

Eventually, Sheen will return to acting and get a new effective medication. It’s important not to give up and to always remember that we are the only ones that can put ourselves in traps.