Matthew Perry, who died age 54, was known to the world as the charming, heartwarming and hilarious Chandler Bing from friends.
But he was also an addict. That was the “big, terrible thing” Perry referenced in the title of his memoir last year titled ; Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. He made no secret of his relationship with alcohol, his addiction to Vicodin after a 1997 jet-ski accident, his attempts to stay sober, and his near-death experience in 2019 after his colon burst as a result of his use of opioids.
The memoir starts with the prologue: “Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
In the final years of his life, he wanted to leave a legacy of helping other addicts overcome their struggles.
his Tragic death
Nearly a year to the day, after publishing his memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing”, Perry was found dead on Saturday in his hot tub at his Los Angeles home in an apparent drowning. He was 54.
The police said. It could be weeks or even months before the cause of his death is established, experts said.
After a jet ski accident, Perry became addicted to pills
Perry characterised himself as a ready-made, just-add-water addict: an alcoholic with his first drink at the age of 14.
Then after a jet ski accident in 2007, while filming ” fools rush in” with salma hayek, he was hooked on painkillers when he was prescribed Vicodin. “It wasn’t my intention to have a problem with it,” he said in 2002. “But from the start, I liked how it made me feel, and I wanted to get more.”
High, he drove a red Mustang convertible across the desert, feeling “complete and utter euphoria”: “I remember thinking, ‘If this doesn’t kill me, I’m doing this again.’” It didn’t then.
His addictions and struggles during “friends“
When Perry was first cast on Friends at age 24, his alcohol addiction was just starting to surface. “I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” he admits. “But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.'”
At one terrifying point during filming Friends , Perry’s addiction got out of control, taking 55 Vicodin a day and was down to 128 pounds. “I didn’t know how to stop,” he 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.”
Though Perry tried to hide his condition, the dramatic changes in his appearance each year reflected his state of sobriety. And he confessed that he didn’t watch the show because he couldn’t see himself like that.
“I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show, because I can go, ‘drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine’ — like I could tell season by season by how I looked,” he said, referring to the stage of addiction he was in during filming, in an interview on the “Q with Tom Power” podcast in Toronto in November.
Eventhough, his addiction off set was spiraling he never drunk or got high on set. “I had this odd rule that I would never drink on a set,” Perry told The New York Times. But the effects of his addictions still showed. “I went to work in extreme cases of hangovers. It’s so horrible to feel that way and have to work and be funny on top of that.”
He also admitted that he didn’t remember three saisons from friends due to his extreme substance abuse.“I don’t remember three years of it,” Perry admitted about filming Friends during his uncontrolled addiction. “I was a little out of it at the time—somewhere between Seasons 3 and 6.”
In his memoir, Perry also noted that fans would have been able to tell whether he was drinking or taking drugs in certain seasons, depending on his appearance.
“When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills; when I have a goatee, it’s a lot of pills,” he said.
His ‘Friends’ costars tried to help
Perry was eventually confronted by his concerned co-star Jennifer Aniston, who starred in Friends as Rachel Green.
“‘We can smell it,’ she said, in a kind of weird but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer,” Perry wrote.
Aniston described him as “one of the most sensitive people I’ve ever met, more than most girls I know. His feelings get hurt. He cares what people think.” Friends co-creator and executive producer Marta Kauffman told People, “It was terrifying… watching someone you care about in so much pain.”
“I tried to talk to him,” Friends costar LeBlanc, who played Joey Tribbiani, told People. “There wasn’t a response. It’s such a personal struggle; they need to bottom out on their own.” As difficult as it was, his co-stars simply stood aside, ready to support him. After all, it was all they could do.
“Hard doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Kudrow, who played Phoebe Buffay, told The New York Times of the 2000-2001 season. “When Matthew was sick, it was not fun. We were just hopelessly standing on the sidelines. We were hurting a lot. Matthew is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life. He’s charming and hilarious. Most of our hard laughs came from Matthew.”
Although Perry knew they all cared, the efforts were lost on him. “I wasn’t ready to hear it,” he admitted. “You can’t tell anyone to get sober. It has to come from you.”
His recovery journey
Perry went to rehab 15 times over the years, and that made him well-versed on the tools necessary to maintain sobriety. “I’m pretty healthy now,” he says, before joking, “I’ve got to not go to the gym much more, because I don’t want to only be able to play superheroes. But no, I’m a pretty healthy guy right now.”
His first trip to rehab was in 1997, spending 28 days at a Hazelden Betty Ford facility in Minnesota. But he didn’t stay sober for long. In May 2000, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas from alcohol abuse.
In February 2000, he was filming both Friends and the movie Serving Sara, so he had to commute between two sets in Los Angeles and Dallas to play his parts.
Around this time, he was drinking vodka by the quart.“I was sleepy and shaking at work,” he said.
But on February 23, 2001, something shifted. “I can’t describe it, because bigger things were taking place that I can’t put into words,” he said. That day, he was in his Dallas hotel room and decided to call his parents for help.
“I didn’t get sober because I felt like it,” he told The New York Times. “I got sober because I was worried I was going to die the next day.”
Even though Friends was still in production and there were 13 days of shooting left on the movie, his parents took him to a rehab center in California.
“It was scary. I didn’t want to die,” he said. “But I’m grateful for how bad it got. It only made me more adamant about trying to get better.”
After two and a half months, he re-emerged and finished filming his movie. He also returned to the set of Friends. “I learned that a happy life is possible without alcohol or drugs,” he said of his new outlook.
His near death experience in 2019
Perry also talked about his near-death experience in 2019 at age 49, in which Perry’s colon burst because of his opioid use. He was left in a coma for two weeks and hospitalized for five months, and he had to use a colostomy bag.
During the health scare, he was placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which provides prolonged cardiac and respiratory support to the heart and lungs. Perry recalled that doctors told his family he had a “2% chance to live.”
“There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived,” he said in an interview with People magazine last year. “So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason.”
Perry’s recovery gave him a new purpose
In an interview with The New York Times in October 2022, he estimated: “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober.” And at the time of the interview, he confessed that he had been clean for 18 months.
Despite his pain and struggle, Perry said his recovery journey left him with a prevailing sense of duty to help others fighting the same fights.
“I am no saint — none of us are — but once you have been at death’s door and you don’t die, you would think you would be bathed in relief and gratitude. But that isn’t it at all — instead, you look at the difficult road ahead of you to get better and you are pissed. Something else happens, too. You are plagued by this nagging question: Why have I been spared?” he wrote in the book.
‘When I die, I don’t want “Friends” to be the first thing that’s mentioned’
In 2013, Perry converted his mansion in Malibu, California, into a sober living house, which ran for two years. The same year, he received the Champion of Recovery award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He also became a spokesman for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
While promoting his memoir last year, Perry said he wanted to be remembered most for what he did for others.
“The best thing about me, bar none, is if somebody comes up to me and says: ‘I can’t stop drinking. Can you help me?’ I can say yes and follow up and do it,” he said.
Perry spent the rest of his days doing just that.
Actor and comedian Hank Azaria, who also appeared on “Friends,” shared on Instagram that Perry helped him get sober.
“I’m a sober guy for 17 years. The night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in. The whole first year I was sober, we went to meetings together,” he said. “As a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise, and he totally helped me get sober.”
Perry was patient about helping others, and he wanted that to be his true legacy, “I’ve said this for a long time: When I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” he said. “I want [helping people] to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.”
Friends Cast Members Share Emotional Tributes to Matthew Perry
The cast of Friends is honoring the memory of costar Matthew Perry in a shared statement:
“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew. We were more than just cast mates. We are a family,” the sitcom’s famous main cast said in a statement shared to ABC News Monday. “There is so much to say, but right now we’re going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss.”
“In time we will say more, as and when we are able,” the statement continues. “For now, our thoughts and our love are with Matty’s family, his friends, and everyone who loved him around the world.”
