Charlie Sheen's Most Outrageous On-Set Moment Uncovered — Actor Reveals He 'Shoved Ice Cubes Up His Butt' to Help Stay Awake During Filming While on Drug Bender
Charlie Sheen found a wild way to stay awake on set after a bender made him fall asleep on camera.
Sept. 9 2025, Published 7:00 p.m. ET
Charlie Sheen used a highly unorthodox method to stay awake after he kept nodding off while filming a movie on a drug bender, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The actor, 60, shared how he stuck an ice cube up his butt to help stay alert and focused after being scolded on set, detailing whether it worked and how he came up with the crazy idea.
The 'Only' Solution
Sheen came up with the ice idea without anyone introducing him to it.
"I asked that they [have] somebody get a cup of ice. Not ice water, ice. And I'd never heard of anybody doing this. I'd never done it before. It was never presented in any type of a sexual setting," Sheen told Entertainment Tonight on Tuesday, September 9.
"It was the only thing I saw as a solution in that moment," he said about putting ice up his rear end as a stimulant after a director had called Sheen out about falling asleep the day before while shooting a scene.
"And I went into the bathroom. I took one of the ice cubes and keistered it and just put it up the butt," Sheen recalled. "What it did was that's suddenly the only thing you're thinking about as you can imagine."
The unorthodox invigoration worked like a charm, as the Hollywood legend said he "probably did one more take, got the scene, and we made the day."
Crack Cocaine 'Creativity'
Sheen credited crack for his ingenuity in coming up with the ice hack.
When Sheen was asked how he came up with the wild idea to help keep him awake, he credited the creativity that came along with being an addict.
"Well, it's like there's there there's a line in the book that crack sometimes is the mother of invention, all right. That was pretty creative though, wasn't it?" the Two and a Half Men alum said with a laugh.
Throes of Addiction
Sheen was purchasing so much cocaine that a drug cartel became suspicious.
The Wall Street star revealed in his new memoir, The Book of Sheen, that he was buying so much cocaine during his 2011 meltdown that a notorious Mexican drug cartel thought he was dealing it.
"I’m not sure what the catalyst was, but I wound up on the most colossal run of all runs that saw me blast through almost two kilos in under three weeks," Sheen described about his copious amount of crack use.
"Toward the end of that third week, the party hadn’t ever really stopped," the actor continued, as he needed to hit up his dealer for more coke and got a shocking response.
Sheen's Coke Use Shocked a Cartel
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Sheen has been completely sober since December 2017.
"His tone over the phone wasn’t anything I’d heard previously, and it had my cracky-senses tingling. He was at the house, twenty minutes later, to inform me that I was officially being cut off by the cartel, and this 'one time,' the Sinaloans weren't gonna take it personally," Sheen said about the notorious Mexican drug syndicate.
The Platoon star's dealer told Sheen, "My guys are shutting you down because they’re convinced that you're dealing. They've never seen this much dope go to one guy who wasn't dealing."
The star was given the ultimatum to find a new drug dealer or cut his cocaine use in half so as not to upset the cartel any further.
Crafty Sheen came up with a plan to keep his crack use at astronomical levels. He got his dealer to get half of the coke he needed from the cartel to appease the organization while bringing the other half from a different source.
The author revealed later in the book that he quit doing drugs in 2015 and has been sober from alcohol since December 2017.
