I Agree with Charlie Sheen

Somehow, despite a cholera epidemic in Haiti, an earthquake in New Zealand that killed hundreds, a civil war in Libya that has killed thousands and a war we're fighting in Afghanistan, the media has spent maximum air time and print columns on actor and comedian Charlie Sheen and his personal life. As Sheen has pointed out several times, there's something wrong with that.

Sheen has been making the talk show rounds, calling in to radio shows and writing a lot of Tweets. Some very important truths that he is advancing may be getting lost in his media blitz. They shouldn't be.

One of the most important truths Charlie has been stating concerns the "talking heads" and their on-air consultations with "experts." Various mental health professionals have offered their diagnosis, their advice and their prognostications of Sheen's future without ever having met the man, much less done any sort of examination.

Imagine how you would feel if a doctor made serious pronouncements about your mental health in public without knowing you. A stranger, telling the world that you're seriously ill, mentally unbalanced and in danger of killing yourself. That would make me angry and it appears that it makes Charlie Sheen angry, too.

Charlies has made a number of statements disparaging Alcoholics Anonymous and its sister group, NA. He states that their twelve steps are not for him. Here, again, he's correct. Human beings are complicated creatures. Cookie cutter approaches to complex mental health issues too often fail, or replace one addiction with another. His claim of a 5% success rate might be off a few percent, but he's correct that AA has many more failures than successes.

Charlie Sheen points out that there are a lot of people he does not know making very serious statements about him, his lifestyle and his behavior. He is very clear that he did not choose to be a role model for anyone and that how he lives his life is no one's business but his.

Americans enjoy celebrity gossip. Sheen's behavior is, in large part, based on statements made by prostitutes and drug users, hardly the most reliable sources. He has chosen to be an actor. Does that mean that his entire life is grist for the media mill? If he lives that life on the edge, is it anyone's business?

In a world full of real news, news that affects the lives of thousands and millions of people directly, do the actions of actor and comedian Charlie Sheen really matter one whit?