Addiction

Family Graveyard at Tuckahoe Plantation

I just finished reading Matthew Perry’s Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Well, actually, the book was an Audible so I listened. The reader of the book was Matthew Perry so listening was a personal, double dose of Perry being Perry. Of course, until I read the book, I didn’t know much about him but I felt I knew Chandler Bing quite well. I did not watch the series Friends when it was aired from 1994 to 2004, I didn’t start watching until 2021. Not sure why. The show Friends has received criticism for a variety of things, probably deserved. The worst is fat shaming, perhaps a tie with the lack of diversity. The series was notable for the very apparent bond among the actors, an ensemble instead of a “star” approach, and the actors’ skills at being the characters the writers had in mind. I think back (oh, so long ago) when I was that age and played hard with my friends. Those were my OV-10, Nail FAC days…oh my.

I started listening to the book and Perry’s voice, familiar and comfortable. I paraphrase but he said he’d almost died several times and so the reader might consider the book as coming from the other side. It took me by surprise, he’d passed just a short while ago and so for me, it was from the “other side.” And, “other side” became an underlying theme as I listened to him narrate his life story. I got more than a peek into his life, he opened up about pretty much everything and the Big Terrible Thing was his disease, addiction. He started drinking in his mid-teens and continued drinking for most of his life…perhaps not the last year or two. I don’t know. He smoked, 2-3 packs a day. He did a variety of drugs, mostly opiates…sometimes 70+ Vicodins a day. He never felt he was “good enough.” The drugs helped him deal with many issues, emotional, social, work. Even at his lowest he was apparently fun to be with at work and play. But he was sick. He only had one sober season in Friends and that was the last one. He said you could tell whether he was doing heavy alcohol or heavy opioids by how much weight he carried…booze he was heavy, drugs he was skinny. He spent $7 million on rehab. The season Chandler married Monica he was driven into the set from rehab and picked up after the shoot. His intestines exploded, his lungs were awful, and on and on and on. He’d quit drugs for a while and then…something would happen and he’d start again.

Addiction is a disease and it’s not a matter of “just stopping.” The disease captures the physical, emotional, and mental center of a person. Perry’s big wish before Friends was to become famous…he thought being famous would make everything “okay” and he wouldn’t feel inadequate and alone and could then stop drinking and drugging. He found fame did not unlock the door of knowledge or self worth. His book is a very gritty tale of an addict trying to be part of something…a career, a relationship, a family member, a friend. For Perry, he was always tilting, falling, getting up, starting over…like a beginning unicycle rider. He was a big proponent of Alcoholics Anonymous and went to thousands of meetings.

What’s it like to be an addict? What’s it like to battle the disease? Listen to the book. Listen to Matthew Perry. It truly is gut wrenching.