I have read the memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing written by Matthew Perry, who was one of the six Friends from the NBC television show which aired between the mid-nineties to early 2000s. Matthew Perry died in the bathtub of his Los Angeles house on October 28, 2023. More recently, the results of his autopsy revealed that his death was caused by a large dose of ketamine (used as a treatment for his anxiety and depression), coupled with the coronary artery disease he suffered (and the extended use of buprenorphine in order to treat his opioid use disorder). His death really took most people by surprise. Now, what I will write about in this text, in no way represents my review or critique of the book. Having said that, I think it is a book that is worthwhile to read.
Throughout the book, I got the sense of feeling sorry for him. At the same time, I would stop and reflect on the fact that he was a very well-known actor, especially during the time when Friends was on the air, and on the fact that he was a more or less a young, good-looking guy with a lot, really a lot of money. Now, why did I feel sorry for him? Well, in the book he tells the reader how he spent most of his adult years going in and out of rehab, having spent about nine million dollars as a result (that was the estimate he provided). Also, throughout the book he tells how his relationships with his parents were far from optimal, and that he always carried this sense of abandonment, particularly from his father. He also mentioned how he mostly used/abused alcohol and other drugs to feel “happy” like the “normal” (his words) people who did not need these in order to be happy (again, these were his words).
Being a Friends’ fan myself, I’ve always considered Chandler (his character) as the funniest of all of the friends. Based on the book, and his multiple projects, which included writing and starring his own play, he was a man of many talents and for sure, being in his fifties, someone who could still produce several pieces of meaningful work.
Although he mentioned multiple times how his parents were indeed loving and supportive, particularly when he needed them the most, like the multiple hospital and rehab stays that he underwent, he was a man who always seemed to feel lonely. And based on his own recount, for a time, he truly believed that being famous would take care of the hole that he felt in his life. For example, he seemed to have been really affected by the time in which he was sent as a child via airplane from Canada to Los Angeles, as an unaccompanied minor. Being an unaccompanied minor was one of the running themes (maybe the main one) in his memoir. He also described multiple of his romantic relationships with women and how most of the time he ended these relationships due to his fear of being abandoned by them, first.
One of the main take-home messages I received from the book was that Matty’s (as his friends called him) drug abuse was really a consequence of a medical illness and that he very likely was genetically predisposed (or predisposed in some other way) to use and/or abuse drugs. I guess one can value even more the sense of control that some people have in order to just have one drink and then stop. According to his own words, Matty did not have that ability of self-control and likely it was not his fault.