Charlie Sheen Reveals How He Avoids Alcohol and Drugs Now (Exclusive)

Charlie Sheen knows his life looks way (way!) different now than it did a decade ago.

The actor, who turns 60 on Sept. 2, is also celebrating eight years of sobriety, after years of struggling with addiction to alcohol and drugs. He says that despite numerous failed rehab attempts in his past, by the time he fully quit everything in 2017, it wasn’t all that difficult for him.

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“There wasn’t anywhere to go with it,” he tells PEOPLE of doing drugs, which he stopped even before he quit drinking. “And whether it’s true or not, I believe the next hit would kill me.” As for drinking? He quit cold turkey one day after realizing he wanted to be the kind of dad his kids (Cassandra, Sami, Lola, Bob and Max) could rely on, after finding himself too drunk to drive Sami to an appointment.

Now, when he gets a craving to party, he says he reflects on his past.

“I keep really awful situations on a mobile spinning around my head, like one of those things you would hang over a baby crib,” Sheen says. “And anytime I’m thinking, ‘That’d be a great idea,’ there’s an example that I can go to and just remember that it wouldn’t be a good idea —  just the shame, the distress, and the chaos. It’s all still there.”

He does admit he misses parts of his old lifestyle. “I miss the first hour of drinking. If I could only drink for one hour, maybe I would. But it’s the 15 hours after that first drink where things go wrong.”

Sheen is now telling his full life story in the memoir The Book of Sheen (out Sept. 9) and a two-part Netflix documentary called aka Charlie Sheen (Sept. 10) He’s looking forward to both projects coming out, but is admittedly a little nervous to have the whole story out in the world.

“I am nervous and that’s OK. If I wasn’t nervous, it wouldn’t feel right,” he says, adding that the projects didn’t stem from a need to right the wrongs of his past or to portray himself as a victim.

“I spent most of my fifties apologizing to everyone I’d hurt,” he says. “I’m not going to run from my past, or let it define me.” He admits he still hasn’t fully forgiven himself, though.

“Forgiveness is still an evolving thing,” he says. “I still get what I call the ‘shame shivers.’ These are the moments that hit me, of the heinous memories and choices and consequences. They’re getting farther in between, so I guess that’s progress. What has been interesting about making amends is that most people have been like, ‘Hey yeah, we’re good man, but we hope you’ve also forgiven yourself.’ I have to remember that that’s also part of the process.”

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These days, Sheen spends his days being a dad and grandfather (his first daughter Cassandra, whom he had when he was 19, has three children).

“What’s cool is that her twins have only known me sober,” he says. He’s also grateful to be alive, and that he never died during his past benders, when he could take down a 7-gram rock of crack cocaine (the equivalent of two eightballs of cocaine) and not die.

“At my parties, I always said, ‘Park your judgement at the door. No pain in the bedroom. And no one can die,’” he says. “Those were good rules.”  

The Book of Sheen hits shelves on Sept. 9 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold. aka Charlie Sheen streams on Netflix starting Sept. 10.