(Trigger warning: Descriptions of drug addiction.)
"I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life but the best thing about me, bar none, is that if an alcoholic or a drug addict comes up to me and says, ‘Will you help me?’ I will always say ‘Yes, I know how to do that. I will do that for you, even if I can’t always do it for myself," said Matthew Perry, during an interview with Canadian broadcaster Tom Power in 2022, adding, "So I do that, whenever I can. In groups, or one on one.”
The same year, he told Good Morning America, “What's interesting about it is I've stood on a stage helping 100,000 people at the same time, but I get the same juice, I get the same thing, from helping one person."
In the early 1990s, when he bagged the career-making role in Friends, Mattew Perry was 24. In the next 10 years, he became known to the world as the immensely likeable Chandler Bing – the witty one, who wooed people with his one-liners.
By the time Perry was 34, in his own words, he “was really entrenched in a lot of trouble."
Perry died on 28 October at the age of 54. He wanted to be remembered not just as his iconic character, or as a person who struggled with addiction – but for the work he did to help others who underwent similar battles.
Matthew Perry's Addiction Journey
Perry has often recalled that the addiction started in 1997 when he was prescribed Vicodin after a jet skiing accident (though he did refer to how he started drinking Budweiser and Andrès Baby Duck wine at the age of 14).
But the actor checked into rehab before season 4 of the sitcom aired. Since then, he went on to say that he has spent about $7 million on his sobriety journey, he writes in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’.
Conversations around substance use and sobriety were rare in the 1990s, and they continue to be taboo topics.
Research has suggested that the stigma surrounding these issues can both affect the individual and the care that they receive. We don’t have to go beyond tabloid news even to see how the news of people getting the help they need can be looked at.
Despite this, Perry never shied away from sharing his journey with the world. In Alcoholics Anonymous, he is known to sponsor three members and chose to not remain anonymous about his sponsorship.
In his words to the Times Sunday, "It suggests that there’s a stigma and that we have to hide. This is not a popular opinion, by the way.” Arguably, considering the stigma around it, the condition of anonymity is perhaps helpful to many.
Perry recalled a time when he would ‘fake back injuries and migraine headaches’ and by season 3 on Friends, “would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it.”
Speaking about his addiction, Perry said, “If the police came over to my house and said, 'If you drink tonight, we're going to take you to jail,' I'd start packing. I couldn't stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older."
He remembered that he got nominated for an ‘Outstanding Lead Actor’ Emmy in 2002, after season 9. It was the year he was “sober the whole way through”, and added, “I was like, 'That should tell me something.'"
He shared that his co-stars on Friends were “understanding and patient” with him.
'How's Matthew Perry Doing?'
Among his co-stars on the show, namely Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, and David Schwimmer, Kudrow even went on to write the foreword for his memoir. She began the foreword with the phrase, “How’s Matthew Perry doing?”
"Over the many years since I was first asked, it's been, at different times, the most asked question for me," she wrote.
“I just focused on Matthew, who could make me laugh so hard every day, and once a week, laugh so hard I cried and couldn't breathe. He was there, Matthew Perry, who is whip smart ... charming, sweet, sensitive, very reasonable and rational. That guy, with everything he was battling, was still there. The same Matthew who, from the beginning, could lift us all up during a grueling night shoot for the opening titles inside that fountain."Lisa Kudrow, Actor
In Rehab While Shooting Iconic Friends Scene
“I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door,” Perry wrote in his memoir.
He even revealed that he was living in a rehab facility while filming Chandler and Monica’s (Cox) wedding scene, one of the most iconic scenes on the show featuring probably its most loved couple.
Though he recalled feeling “nothing” when the show ended, a feeling he attributed to the detox drug he was taking at the time, he also remembered that Friends was a ‘safe place, a touchstone of calm.’
“Friends had been a safe place, a touchstone of calm for me; it had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning, and it had also given me a reason to take it just a little bit easier the night before.”
Admittedly, much of the memoir speaks of women in a less than favourable manner, something many have rightfully called out. But the actor’s decision to place his recovery journey as the focus has been appreciated by many.
While a memoir must never be used as a “how-to” when it comes to addiction recovery, his revelations added to a much-required conversation.
The actor kept at his recovery journey, which spanned over a decade, and he wanted to be viewed as a lesson, “The interesting reason that I can be so helpful to people now is that I screwed up so often. It’s nice for people to see that somebody who once struggled in their life is not struggling any more.”
Perry’s skill as an actor was evident even in his roles in The West Wing and The Ron Clark Story; it’s no surprise that the actor had as much a grip on drama as he did on comedy.
Afterall, while Bing might be the show’s comic relief, he is also the one fans were often rooting for the most (I sure was). He was Chandler Bing, the one with the dead-end job who never managed to leave the shadow of his uber-attractive roommate when it came to romance, and who used humour as a defence mechanism.
A character that would’ve just been in it for a few laughs was immortalised by Perry, an energy similar to the one he takes into Mr. Sunshine.
Considering Friends aired at a time when television was on its own meteoric rise as a medium, it is no surprise that Perry, became such an iconic character. But hopefully, like the actor wished, he is also leaving behind a legacy of resilience and above all, of tackling the stigma around substance use and addiction.
Like Perry told People in 2022:
“What I’m most surprised with is my resilience. The way that I can bounce back from all of this torture and awfulness. Wanting to tell the story, even though it’s a little scary to tell all your secrets in a book, I didn’t leave anything out. Everything’s in there.”
The same year, he told ABC News: “Secrets kill you. Secrets kill people like me.”
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