Actress Brooke Mueller recently opened up about her issues and struggles with addiction and why she credits Charlie Sheen with helping her through some of them.
What did Brooke Mueller say about her addiction issues?
Speaking to People in a recent interview, Mueller — who is best known for starring alongside her friend Paris Hilton in the 2011 reality show The World According to Paris — opened up on the addiction issues that she suffered through during the early 2000s and what being a “stage four” addict is like.
“When we’re at stage four, it typically means that cycle where you just have these relapses, no matter how well you get, and no matter how many years, it’s just a matter of time,” Mueller said. “I want to be honest about it, because if I try to sugarcoat it, I’d be lying to myself.”
“The darkness and the shame as we get older, that sticks with us even more because we have more evidence of pain that we’ve caused others and ourselves. It’s sad for us because we don’t want this, nobody would want this. And so there’s got to be a mental health component to it, where our suffering sometimes gets so strong that we literally — our brain tricks us and rationalizes why this time it’s okay.”
After being sober for six years, Mueller said she relapsed in the summer of 2023 and then again sometime after when she thought she needed ADD medication.
“I somehow find these excuses, and I genuinely believe them, where I’ll justify and rationalize why I need a prescription for Adderall,” said Mueller. “The last relapse I had was on something that can be abused, and the bottle is gone in a day and a half.”
Mueller went on to say that her doctors refer to her as an “anomaly,” and that although she considers herself a bit lucky, she knows that she isn’t living “any sort of great life” in the moment.
“I’m not talking about now, but imagine you build up everything back. You finally gained the trust and the respect, and the kids are being dropped off in your care and then constantly throwing it all away, not even knowing why or how because you weren’t planning on it,” Mueller said.
One person that has always been around Mueller to help is Charlie Sheen, her ex-husband. The pair married in 2008 and have two children together, and Mueller credits Sheen (who has also struggled with addiction) as being someone who “gets it” and is there to help.
“He gets it,” said Mueller of Sheen. “He’s always there to help me and pick up the pieces. He knows his whole addiction history, and [thinks], ‘If I can just stop without one AA meeting or without needing any whatever, then why can’t you?’ I think he thinks it’s more about just making a choice, and then with the addiction [mindset], sometimes we don’t have a choice. We get to a point to where we don’t have a choice.
“But if I look back at our marriage, he was always one that could shut it off and turn it off and go to sleep, and I would be taking the car sneaking out to Skid Row.”
(Source: People)
