Charlie Sheen Is Righteously Depraved

Pleasure is the most basic human desire. Our predecessors struggled through a nasty and brutish, yet they still got their serotonin receptors firing through putting meat on fire and inventing sexual perversions. Today, our world is just as nasty and brutish, but we have refined the realm of pleasure so completely that we’re tempted never to leave. Soon, we will have nutrient rich cocaine and fully realistic sex robots. Until that time, booze, coke, porn, and hookers will do nicely. At least that’s the case if you ask Charlie Sheen.

Mr. Sheen is the ultimate heathen. He seizes pleasure at every opportunity. In and out of marriages, rehab, and career trouble, Mr. Sheen unapologetically comes back to the pleasure drug. You can call him a drug addict or a sex addict, but he is simply addicted to Pleasure. He is a Junkie. The Junkie finds something he likes and does it until he does not like it any more. Usually, he stops liking it because it trades off with something else and the high is not worth it any more. The rules of the tradeoff don’t apply to Mr. Sheen.

The Junkie may lose his family. Without a doubt, some junkies feel the Guilt and Shame of the penitent Old Testament sinner- the type of resonant fire in his brain extending up from Dante’s Third Circle- each time they satiate their gluttonous desires. If Mr. Sheen is indeed the garden variety junkie, then he should be susceptible to God’s double-barreled Guilt and Shame shotgun of repentance. But Mr. Sheen puts no stake in fidelity. His treatment of fidelity ranges from indifference to the type of scorn usually seen only in abortion clinic protests. Mr. Sheen has broken up with more women than most men have imagined while masturbating. He has ended relationships with threats of beatings, actual beatings, and Old West gunfire. He has five children in the custody of three women and exalts the fact that he doesn’t have to worry about tracking down a reliable and tight-lipped babysitter when he has the urge for a 36-hour bender. At a minimum, one could say that family life is not the anchor that will keep Mr. Sheen’s flighty spirit grounded.

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The Junkie may lose his career. Regular saps like us can’t get away with devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure because it gets in the way of the Daily Grind. If we spent our nights smoking crack and fucking hookers from dusk til dawn, our productivity would take a hit. Lindsay Lohan is a junkie with some of the same pleasure-seeking qualities as Mr. Sheen, but her career has been derailed. He has maintained a more successful career with a more ambitious pleasure addiction. His secret is that he has landed the perfect junkie gig. He plays himself on a mindless sitcom. Every week, the network turns over a bank vault worth of unmarked, non-consecutive $100 bills and returns to its blissful ignorance. Mr. Sheen can show up hungover and read his lines off cue cards one afternoon each Thursday. He gets a bankroll for his pleasure addiction, CBS gets ratings, and the mouth-breathers get season upon season of Two and a Half Men to serve as a soundtrack for their pathetic march to the grave. Everyone wins.

The Junkie may lose his health. Indeed, the Overdose is the Junkie’s Waterloo. Without it, John Belushi would have his own mindless sitcom. Adam Sandler wouldn’t have to dress Kevin James up like Chris Farley and pretend to laugh every time he shows his gut. But the Overdose is real. The problem is that the Overdose scares everyone other than the Junkie. The Junkie wants his next infusion of pleasure- he is not concerned with the opportunity cost of death. The Abyss is the natural end, after which there is no pleasure and therefore nothing to interest the Junkie. Mr. Sheen’s orienting principle is pleasure, so the complete absence of pleasure does not register. It is not his concern; it is ours.

Mr. Sheen cannot bottom out. He can keep drinking, smoking, and fucking his way to pleasure as long Angus Jones still looks young enough to play a kid on TV. The Junkie gets religion when he has lost everything and hits the low bottom. Mr. Sheen does not have a low bottom. He has days where E! News talks more shit about him and the Average Joe’s give water cooler high fives in his honor. He might even have to spend a weekend in a glamorous rehab facility on the beach, which is nothing less than an indulgent vacation. With his batteries recharged and nothing to lose, Mr. Sheen can jump back on the train and embark on his quintessential human pursuit of pleasure again and again.

Mr. Sheen is a Shimmering Monument to Hedonism. But we are pathologically unable to acknowledge his achievement. He has attained great heights in a domain that we are not allowed to enter. Non-golfers cannot appreciate the genius of Tiger Woods and we- sad sacks of mediocrity- cannot appreciate the genius of the greatest heathen alive. Mr. Sheen is a Pleasure Junkie, and nothing could be more righteous.