The 50-year-old actor went public with his condition during a candid chat on the Today show on Tuesday (November 17), putting an end to days of speculation about his health. During his interview with host Matt Lauer, the star revealed he was diagnosed four years ago, and since then he has been the victim of many "shakedowns" as people he trusted threatened to sell his story to the press.
Sheen has paid out more than $10 million to settle the blackmail attempts, leaving the star - who was once the highest paid TV actor in the world, raking in $1.8 million per episode for his work on Two and a Half Men - in a bad place financially.
"My financial place is not great," Sheen admits. "It'll be great again. I'm a survivor - I've been up and down, I've been rich and poor... It's another chapter in my life, it's not commerce driven, it's socially driven."
He was quick to point out none of the money he has paid has been for "any contamination, not for any transference", but rather to stop people revealing all about his condition.
Sheen, who is known for his penchant for prostitutes, is adamant he has always been honest about his diagnosis with his sexual partners and has only had unprotected sex with two people since learning of his illness - both of whom were informed beforehand. Therefore, although he expects some exes to try and take him to court, he warns that anyone who sues will have an impossible task proving any wrongdoing on his part as it "doesn't exist".
"Having divulged it (diagnosis) is the reason I'm in the mess I'm in with having all the shakedowns," he explains.
The father of five recently broke the news to his eldest daughter Cassandra, 30, and he admits it "hit her hard".
"I said, 'Sweetie, I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner but it didn't seem like you could do anything for me and I didn't want to burden you with the stress,'" he recalls. "She was a rock star (about it)."
His last two ex-wives, Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller, have both known he is HIV positive, with Sheen immediately alerting Mueller, the mother of his twin sons, to his health crisis, urging her to get tested in 2011 as his diagnosis occurred around the same time of their divorce. Her spokesperson has since confirmed to People.com that she does not have the disease, nor do their two boys.
Going forward, Sheen hopes to win the support of the press for being honest about his illness after slamming some of the most recent rumours he's heard about his promiscuity.
"(The worst thing I've read is) that I knew I had AIDS and I was intentionally spreading it - I just thought damn, that's as far from the truth as it's possible to be."
Sheen's doctor, Robert Huizenga, also joined the star for part of the Today interview to make it clear his client does not have AIDS.
Now the actor is hoping to use his celebrity status to draw more attention to the disease and help find a cure.
"If there was one guy on this earth to contract this that's going to deliver a cure, it's me," he states. "Seriously, it's me. I'm not gonna be the poster man for this but I will not shun away from responsibilities and opportunities that drive me to help others and find a cure. I will pick my spots carefully and respectively (to talk about it)."
And Sheen is also determined to get his career back on track, revealing he has a number of projects already lined up.
"As we speak, I have the chairman of Sony excited about doing a show again, I have a couple of films lined up that I can put start days on," he says. "A lot of people said (after learning of his diagnosis)... 'Well, of course (we're still interested), he's still the best guy for the job.' Thus far, there's been no resistance (in Hollywood)."
