Charlie Sheen Reveals the Wild Truth Behind His Two and a Half Men Meltdown

Charlie Sheen is back to telling his side of the Two and a Half Men saga, and the reason he gives for his notorious meltdown is... not what I expected.

From TV king to tabloid cautionary tale

At his peak on Two and a Half Men, Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television, pulling down close to $2 million an episode. Then came the public tirades, including shots at series creator Chuck Lorre, and the studio showed him the door. Now, in his new memoir, The Book of Sheen, the 60-year-old Golden Globe winner lays out what he says tipped everything over.

The twist: he blames a legal performance booster

According to Sheen, he had cleaned up the illicit stuff. The outlier was a legal testosterone cream he says he kept using to get in shape. He writes that he slathered on way too much and that it warped his mood and judgment in a very specific way.

'That drug is known to metabolize into the identical psych profile an anabolic steroid will produce.'

In other words, he believes he was acting like someone on steroids without realizing that is what his body was essentially doing. If you watched the interviews and the headlines pile up, he wants you to read that behavior through that lens.

He is not pretending it was used responsibly

Sheen makes a point of saying the cream can help when handled correctly; his argument is that he did the exact opposite. He basically admits that mixing him, any drug, and the word 'responsible' has never been a winning combo. It is a very Sheen way of owning the mess while also pointing at a specific culprit you do not usually hear in these Hollywood postmortems.

The book

The Book of Sheen is out now at major retailers. If you are into behind-the-scenes TV history or just want the insider version of how one of the most dominant sitcom runs detonated, this is him laying it all out, testosterone cream and all.