While his cult classic show Friends was on air in the ‘90s and early 2000s, few people knew just how awful and deep Matthew Perry’s addiction to alcohol and opiates ran. His memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which came out in November of last year, makes it painfully clear.
The struggle spanned three decades – Perry spent his twenties, thirties and forties in and out of numerous rehab facilities – and eventually culminated with a two-week coma that he had a two percent chance of surviving.
“I had all but killed myself,” Perry writes. “I had never been a partier – taking all those drugs (and it was a lot of drugs) was just a futile attempt to feel better. Trust me to take trying to feel better to death’s door.”
Perry spent his whole life trying to “feel better.” When he was one month old, a pediatrician prescribed phenobarbital, a highly addictive barbiturate to stop his colic. Apparently a common practice in the ‘60s, Perry writes that this was the beginning of his battle with addiction. He was often given phenobarbital while detoxing from other opiates and alcohol.
His parents divorced when Perry was nine months old and he and his mom went to live with his grandparents in Canada, while his dad moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. Plagued by abandonment issues, coupled with addiction that ran in the family, Perry began drinking alcohol when he was 14. By his twenties – he landed the role of Chandler Bing at the age of 25 – Perry was drinking himself to sleep most nights.
For 10 years, from 1994 to 2004 Friends kept Perry afloat – he writes that he was never intoxicated during the actual filming of the show. He more than made up for it during his time off, enough to warrant a failed intervention from his cast-mates.
At his lowest point, Perry was on 55 Vicodin pills a day, in addition to cocaine, Xanax and Suboxone. He estimates to have detoxed 65 times and has spent half his life in rehab and treatment facilities. He was living in rehab during the filming of Chandler and Monica’s wedding in seasons seven and eight and a driver from the facility would drive him to and from the set.
After the show ended, Perry’s film and TV career never quite took off. His all-consuming addiction paired with the “Friends curse” –being unable to shake off his “Chandler” persona made it difficult for him to make it in Hollywood.
A raw and honest narrative of addiction, Perry’s memoir lifts the curtain on the actor behind a beloved TV character.
Alexandra (Sasha) Schwank 