Charlie Sheen revealed he is HIV positive Tuesday in an exclusive TODAY interview with Matt Lauer.
“It’s a hard three letters to absorb. It’s a turning point in one’s life,” the 50-year-old actor said.
Sheen said he was diagnosed roughly four years ago, but doesn’t know how he contracted the virus.
“It started with what I thought was a series of crushing headaches,” he said. “I thought I had a brain tumor. I thought it was over.”He also insisted it was “impossible” that he knowingly transmitted the virus to others. While he admitted to having unprotected sex with two people since the diagnosis, both were informed ahead of time and have been under the care of his doctor. But Sheen dismissed the idea that he engaged in high-risk behaviors.
“You’re talking about needles and that whole mess? No, definitely not,” he said.
HIV is the virus that leads to AIDS, which has no cure. But “Charlie does not have AIDS,” said the actor’s physician, Dr. Robert Huizenga, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
While an HIV-positive diagnosis used to be considered a death sentence, and there still is no cure, medical advancements have helped turn it into a manageable illness. However, antiviral drugs must be taken for a lifetime.
Sheen then admitted a hooker took picture of his medication and demanded money in return to keep quiet.
Explaining how it happened he said: “Yes this after I told her ‘Thank you for your time, we are not going to see each other anymore’. It was after the day she bought me herbal medications.”
Asked if he was still paying these people he said: “Not after today I’m not. I think I release myself from this prison today.”
He then told how, after learning he had HIV, his life spiralled out of control.
He said: “I was depressed by the condition I was in. I was doing a lot of drugs. I was drinking want too much. I was making really bad decisions. That part I own 100 per cent.”
He refused ever transmitting the disease to another partner saying it was “impossible, impossible”.