Speaker 1So he writes in his memoir that his first drink was at 14, and from that moment, he felt complete. But the big pivotal moment, and I think a lot of people with opiate addiction can relate to this, he had a jet ski accident in 1997, and he was prescribed Vicodin.
Speaker 2Hi there. Welcome back, or welcome to Recovering Out Loud podcast, the show where we get real about mental health and addiction. I'm so glad you're here. If you or someone you love is struggling with drugs or alcohol, please reach out for help. Send me a message on all social media platforms at recoveringoutloudpod, or by email at recoveringoutloudpod at gmail.com. You are no longer alone.
Speaker 1All right. Today on Recovering Out Loud, I'm going to do something a little bit different. I wanted to start a People We Lost Too Soon series where I talk about people in the public eye and their struggles with addiction. And if you've ever watched Friends, if you've ever watched Matthew Perry act, he was a really funny actor, beloved as Chandler on Friends. And, you know, when I was in rehab this last time in January, I got a chance to read his memoir, which is incredible. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. So a lot of this information is going to be from his memoir. It's called Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. So I highly recommend checking it out. He goes into detail about addiction and his struggles with addictions. He's been to, he went to multiple rehabs. He's been to, he's been to a lot of rehabs. Unfortunately, as a lot of us know, he didn't make it out of addiction. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to start these episodes. So let's dive into it. So we'll start with his early life. His name, his full name is actually Matthew Langford Perry. He was born on August 19th of 1969 in Massachusetts, and his parents divorced before his first birthday. So he was born in the United States. And he was born in the United States. And he was born in the United States. And so he talks about it in quite, in a lot of detail in his book. And his parents met on some talk show, or she was in, she was a pageant queen in the Canadian side of things. So he grew up, Matthew Perry grew up mostly in, in Ottawa, and he was raised mainly by his mom and his stepfather, who was a journalist, Keith Morrison, the guy from Dateline. So he talks about being a kid and having restless energy. He was mischievous. And he actually admitted to beating up Pierre Trudeau's son, who we, a lot of us might know, the former Prime Minister, most recently, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and during the schoolyard days. So that's kind of funny. He actually kicked his ass. Matthew Perry really liked tennis. He became one of the top junior players in Canada. But then he moved to Los Angeles at the age of 15 to live with his dad, as probably any kid would. He didn't really pursue tennis. It's funny, he actually goes into quite a lot of detail in his book about riding on the plane alone. And, and how that really affected him down the road, being alone on an airplane and being filled with fear as a child, because he did it quite a bit. So he moved to LA at 15. And then he wanted to, he wanted to become an actor, as most people who moved to LA want to do. He started with small roles, a show called Charles in Charge, Growing Pains, and Sydney. But the story, so the story of him actually getting into Friends and becoming Chandler Bing is actually sort of an act of providence. It's a funny coincidence how it happened. I remember when I was reading it in rehab, I was actually quite blown away how it was supposed to go to someone else, the role, and then it went to him. So I'll explain that a bit later. But anyway, it was kind of a weird idea for a show. It was about baggage handlers in the future. And then the project eventually fell through. He was free to audition. So he auditioned for the role of Chandler Bing. And it was actually funny. One of his, one of his good friends, I'm blanking on the name right now, originally got cast for the role. And Chandler was the last role to be cast in the show Friends. So one of his good buddies, who's also an actor, obviously, got cast for the role. And he had two roles to choose from at the time, this guy. And he actually called Matthew Perry and said, which one should I take? And Matthew Perry really wanted the role of Chandler. And he talks about in his book, he had a real internal battle where he wanted to tell him not to take Chandler from Friends because he wanted that role. And he went with his, you know, better judgment and went with his heart and was a good friend and said, No, you should take Chandler. And then his friend actually decided to take the other role of a different show. And then so the role was open for for Matthew Perry is sort of funny how that worked out and would end up essentially changing his entire life. He became extremely rich and famous from that role, as we all know. So Friends, the show Friends premiered in 1994. And Chandler's one liner that a lot of you might know, made him a fan favorite overnight. I don't watch the show that much. But I believe it's something like, can I be any more uninterested or something like that? I'm probably butchering that. But so this is when he started to really battle the drug addiction and started to come into his life. So he writes in his memoir that his first drink was at 14. And from that moment, he felt complete. But the big pivotal moment, and I think a lot of people with opiate addiction can relate to this. He had a jet ski accident in 1997. And he was prescribed Vicodin. Right. So you would start with the Vicodin for the pain, and then it escalated pretty quickly. He started taking 55 pills a day, as he talks about. So by his own count, he went to rehab 15 times. So if you're out there listening to this, and you've been to rehab a lot, like, there's people like you, you know, and you don't have to go out the way he went out. He spent over $9 million trying to get sober, right, not just from rehabs, but from therapists and other types of things. So he was hospitalized so many times that at one point, his colon actually burst. And he was put into a coma for two weeks. He talks about it in his book, the story of how he was in extreme pain, and he was trying to leave the current rehab that he was at. But they wouldn't let him leave because they deemed it as drug seeking behavior. And they thought that he just wanted to go to the hospital to get opiates. So the guy at the treatment center actually stood in front of his car and wouldn't let his assistant go to the hospital. So he was in so much pain from his colon. He didn't know it at the time that his colon burst, but he would later find that out, that he actually told his assistant, just drive, run the guy over, and they got the guy jumped out of the way and they went to the hospital. So he was put into a coma for two weeks, he had 14 stomach surgeries, and he lived with a colostomy bag for nine months. He makes a joke in his book about being forced to leave the hospital. He was full of shit. He was literally full of shit. Like his colon burst and exploded everywhere. He almost died in that moment. Also, all through this, he was filming Friends. And he actually admits to not remembering filming three entire seasons of the show. He doesn't remember three full seasons. He actually talks about it in his book as well, where he says in the show, when you go back and watch when he has a goatee, the facial hair, he has a goatee. That's when he was on opiates. And heavily addicted to painkillers. And then when he doesn't, you can tell the difference. He looks completely different. He's sober when he doesn't have the goatee. So as the castmates started to notice, specifically Jennifer Aniston, she pulled him aside once and said, we know you're drinking. And he talks about how that moment stuck with him. It was the first time he realized that he couldn't hide it anymore. And other people started to notice. I think a lot of us can relate to that, where it's like, you're doing a good job. You're not hurting anyone else. You're hiding it. And then someone in your life goes, comes up to you and says, Hey, man, like, you need some help. You have a problem. And this kind of, you have the kind of experience where you're like, Oh, man, I got to change because I got to do something about this. Because now it's not just affecting me, it's affecting people around me and people I love. So I find this extremely powerful. And I resonate a lot with with this, even though I didn't, I wasn't addicted, per se, to opiates, I did have my experience with them. But he talks about, quote, the first time I took Vicodin, it felt better. than anything i'd ever experienced and the problem was that feeling stayed with me he actually talks about in his book he he likens it to your when you take opiates your blood it feels like your blood is replaced with warm honey that's how he described the feeling of opiates i think a lot of us can relate to that the sort of warm hug feeling so matthew dated uh perry dated quite a bit of um incredible women he dated julia roberts lizzie caplan but he also he talks a lot about his fear of abandonment from his childhood and how it often sabotaged his relationships he talks about how he uses humor as a shield to keep people out and keep people at a distance so in 20 in 2022 perry released his memoir that i talked about earlier uh heavily highly i recommend it quite heavily that doesn't make any fucking sense just go and read it it's called friends lovers and the big terrible thing so he wrote it entirely himself and it was his way of telling the truth before it was too late kind of ironic then in october of 2023 he passed away at 54 years old so the autopsy later revealed acute ketamine effects as a factor he turned his old malibu mansion into perry house which was a sober living facility for men and now he continues his mission through the matthew perry foundation which is amazing he talks about in his book the story about how he started that uh facility he went in with a sponsor of his and then so the guy ended up taking his investment matthew perry's investment and disappearing he talks about how that negatively affected him so when he died he uh drowned in his hot tub he was in his hot tub on ketamine and he talks about uh how he was using ketamine from doctors because he was getting prescribed ketamine and then he was doctor shopping and getting more uh pills and ketamine on the side so the investigations revealed that his assistant two doctors and producers were involved in supplying him ketamine for depression treatment some pleaded guilty including they called this woman the ketamine queen jasmine sanga and his dart his death sparked legal and media scrutiny so he began drinking at 14 and by 18 he was daily drinking like i said the jet ski accident spun him into a world of opiates um it's funny he says here he attended 6 000 aa meetings 14 stomach surgeries and had a colostomy bag and spent around nine million dollars trying to get sober he had a lot of near-death experiences throughout the time so he talks about a episode in rehab in switzerland where proferol administered before surgery stops his heart for five minutes resulting in eight broken ribs due to a cpr so i think there's a lot to learn from the story and we definitely lost him too soon but i was really inspired by his story and his memoir um as you know he wrote it with the intention of helping the still suffering addict and alcoholic right there's a lot of good stuff in there and uh a lot of hope you know but ultimately he got to a point where in my opinion he wasn't working some sort of recovery program and uh he was looking for that action right he wasn't you know he talks a lot about isolation in his book being a factor and i can relate to that being isolated is literally the key to addiction like the the biggest fuel the biggest catalyst to relapse and addiction is being separate from people from a higher power and trying to do things on your own this sort of isolation place that we get ourselves into he talks about how he broke off engagements when he was sober because he worried he'd hurt his partners if he relapsed right like this constant liability and there's a quote in his book where he says when i die i don't want to be friends to be the first thing mentioned i want helping others to be the first thing love that matthew perry made the world laugh but the most powerful thing he left us isn't chandler being sarcasm but his brutal honesty and authenticity i highly recommend checking out this book it's a great book for people in addiction people struggling with an addict in their life gives some real perspective and the fame side of things he also talks about bruce willis being a huge party animal which is hilarious they did a movie together which is also you know a big part of his success and uh yeah i mean i really wanted to do this because i think it's a really interesting story and a different perspective on being famous and struggling with addiction but it's all the same shit you know um i could relate a lot to it even though he's very different than i was i am uh i can relate a lot to the addiction and the feelings that he talks about in his book and and what drugs did for him right this sense of ease and comfort that we we start to do drugs and then we get this sense of ease and comfort that uh we need to find in sobriety right and to me today the ease and comfort comes from my recovery program it comes from doing this podcast it comes from making content doing the coaching helping others and ultimately i don't want to go back out there right like i want to stay on this road and i want to stay on this road and i want to stay on this side of the fence because it's a lot better it's hard at times but it's worth it thanks for listening today i'm going to be doing a lot more of these episodes coming up if you have any recommendations shoot me a message of people you aren't lost too soon or people struggling with addiction i'm thinking maybe charlie sheen um even though he's not he's still alive he has a netflix documentary coming out but let me know what you think like follow subscribe it really helps the channel i appreciate every single one of you and uh
Speaker 3let's do this thing one day at a time thanks for listening please help us grow the channel and like share and subscribe for more content the discussions and stories shared on this podcast are for informational and motivational purposes only this content is not a substitute for professional medical advice addiction treatment or therapy if you or someone you know is struggling with addiction please consult a licensed physician addiction specialist or mental health professional you are no longer alone you
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