LONDON: American actor Charlie Sheen says he took to drinking to “suffocate” his anxiety after he was diagnosed with HIV.

Sheen, 50, who revealed about his health crisis in 2015 in a TV interview, said he didn’t handle things in the right way in the aftermath of his diagnosis, reported Contactmusic. “It was to suffocate the anxiety and what my life was going to become with this condition and getting so numb I didn’t think about it.

“It was the only tool I had at the time, so I believed that would quell a lot of that angst, a lot of that fear. And it only made it worse.”

The former Two and a Half Men star has battled drugs and alcohol addiction throughout his career, but he insists he can live a sober life because he has sustained it for a significant period of time in the past.