Sheen

Actor Martin Sheen, who portrayed a president on television and is the father of admitted drug user Charlie Sheen, testified before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday to ask Congress for continued support of drug courts, an alternative criminal justice program.

A drug court is a special docket that addresses the cases of nonviolent drug offenders. Members participate in substance abuse treatment programs – usually for at least one year – and are subject to random drug testing. There are currently more than 2,500 drug courts across the country, treating more than 120,000 Americans.

Drug court advocates contend that the courts help reduce recidivism, reducing the number of people in prison and returning law-abiding, tax-paying citizens to society. Drug court participants reported 25% less criminal activity and had 16% fewer arrests than comparable offenders not enrolled in drug courts, according to a Justice Department study.

“It’s a deeply personal [issue],” Sheen told reporters after the congressional hearing, adding that “it’s no secret I’ve been through a 12-step program.”

Sheen quickly reminded lawmakers that he’s no expert on the subject.

“Celebrity, to a greater or lesser degree, is often confused for credibility. For instance, I am not a former president of the United States,” Sheen said in his opening remarks, a reference to his role as President Jed Bartlet on the Emmy award-winning television show “The West Wing.” Sheen is also well-known for his critically acclaimed role in “Apocalypse Now,” a 1979 film about the war in Vietnam.

Despite his amateur political status, Sheen noted that he helped create a drug court in Berkeley in 1996. Graduates from that drug court helped establish sober-living houses in the area. Since then, he’s been an advocate for drug courts because “it is an extension of my work with the peace and social justice community,” he said.

The hearing was called by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs the Judiciary Committee’s crime and terrorism subcommittee.

Earlier Tuesday, Sheen joined fellow actor Matthew Perry and more than a dozen members of Congress to address hundreds of people in a rally in support of drug courts.

The advocates, holding up signs that said “Drug Courts $ave Lives,” pressed lawmakers to commit a minimum of $88.7 million in the 2012 budget toward drug courts, noting that the courts offer a significant return on investment. Every dollar spent on drug courts yields an average of $2 in savings for the criminal justice system.

Beyond the dollars and cents, drug courts have helped reclaim the lives of many who had succumbed to drug addiction.

“You have no idea how … far that money really does go,” one drug court graduate said at the rally.

Others charge that with a soaring national debt, drug courts should be funded by states.

“With out-of-control spending and surging public debt threatening our nation’s stability, increased federal funding of state and local courts should not be a priority,” David Muhlhausen, research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said before the subcommittee.

Charlie Sheen wants to free himself from feeling like he’s being held hostage by his private life.

To shed that sensation, the “Wall Street” star decided to talk about his sexual past in his memoir, “The Book of Sheen,” which comes out Tuesday.

People from his past “had video things or whatever and had stuff over me,” the actor told Michael Strahan on “Good Morning America.” “So I was kind of held hostage, you know, and that’s just a bad feeling.”

Sheen talked Friday on the morning show about how his drug addiction led him to have sex with men — he called it “the other side of the menu” — and how he was forced to pay people to keep those sexual encounters out of the public eye.

Cherlie Sheen on his sexual encounters with men and feeling hostage by his private life.

He also hit on less salacious revelations like the connection between his stutter and his drinking. In the book, Sheen writes about masking his inability to pronounce certain words and sounds with drinking alcohol. “Drinking soften the edges,” he told Strahan. “It gave me freedom of speech.”

After joining the ABC show “Spin City” in 2000 and reading the script, he said, Sheen stopped hiding his speech impediment and asked for help.

“When in doubt, just be human enough to be vulnerable,” he told “GMA.”

Sheen also reveals in the book that some folks wanted to expose his HIV-positive diagnosis before he went public with it in 2015, according to People. Sheen said on “GMA” that finally revealing his diagnosis was a “tremendous relief.”

The “Two and a Half Men” actor — whose paycheck for the sitcom was estimated at as much as $2 million per episode — infamously landed in rehab in 2010 after threatening his ex-wife Brooke Mueller with a knife, trashed his room at the Plaza Hotel in New York and in 2011 was fired from his CBS sitcom amid a meltdown of epic proportions.

During the “GMA” interview, Strahan asked the actor if he had any regrets.

“I do,” Sheen said, “but there’s no value in them.”

A documentary about the actor’s life, “aka Charlie Sheen,” will premiere Wednesday on Netflix. Sheen, who has been sober for eight years, told People he decided to be vulnerable about his past because he wants to own his truth and his stories.

“The stories I can remember anyway,” he said.