What’s in it for me? Follow Matthew Perry through the ups and downs of his troubled and turbulent life.
“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
The year is 2018. Matthew Perry slowly opens his eyes in the UCLA medical center. Disoriented and scared, he turns to his mother who is sitting next to his hospital bed. “Your colon exploded,” she informs him.
Over the next few days he is given the whole story. The frantic rush from his sober living house to the nearest hospital – delusional with pain. The seven-hour surgery to address the burst colon. The doctors declaring his 2 percent chance of survival. And his family and friends who sat by his side during the two-week coma.
As he slowly recovers – in pain, crying, attached to a colostomy bag – he has no choice but to acknowledge his worst fear: This was his fault. He did this to himself.
How did this happen? How did a funny, handsome, talented actor, best-known for playing Chandler Bing in one of the most popular sitcoms in history, fall so far?
In this Blink to Matthew Perry's memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, you’ll learn the full story. From his troubled childhood to his struggles with addiction and the tragic consequences of his fame, he holds nothing back.
Buckle up.
A troubled childhood left Matthew Perry on an unfortunate path.
On a stormy Tuesday night in 1969, one day after the end of Woodstock and a month after the Moon Landing, Matthew Langford Perry came into the world screaming – and didn’t stop.
His parents – a folk singer and a beauty queen – were quickly driven crazy by their colicky son. Concerned and overwhelmed by the constant crying, they took the baby to a doctor. This was how little Matthew Perry, at the developmentally critical age of two months, came to be prescribed the major barbiturate phenobarbitol.
Needless to say, the crying stopped – but this would be the first of many times that Matthew’s problem was fixed with a substance instead of by learning to do the internal work.
At nine months Matthew’s parents broke up, and he was left with his 21-year-old mother while his father pursued his dreams of becoming an actor in California. As Matthew grew up, he learned to be an entertainer and a caretaker – to try and please people and make them laugh.
He found himself fighting for the attention of his mother, who was kept busy as the press secretary for the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. When his mother had another baby, Matthew started feeling like he didn’t belong in the family, and that's when the behavior problems began. He had problems at school because he smoked and got into fights. At one point he even beat up the son of his mother’s boss – the future prime minister Justin Trudeau.
But one of the most significant events of his childhood came at the age of 14: his first drink. He was with two friends – brothers Chris and Brian Murray. No one was home, and for whatever reason, they decided to get drunk. They got hold of a six-pack of beer and a bottle of wine, and finished it all in 15 minutes in Matthew’s backyard.
As you might expect, the brothers began vomiting. But Matthew’s experience was different. He simply lay on his back, in the grass, looking at the moon, and something changed. He realized that, for the first time in his life, everything was fine. The world made sense, all his problems were gone, and he was happier than he had ever been.
While this revelation didn’t immediately lead to regular heavy drinking, it was in that moment that the seed was sown – the seed that would lead to what he calls the Big Terrible Thing, or alcoholism and addiction.
You see, Matthew Perry suffers from anhedonia – he can’t enjoy anything unless it’s exciting… or he’s drunk.
But all this will come later. At 15 years old, Matthew is angry, fighting with his mom, and feeling alienated in Canada. He decides to move to LA to get to know his father and see if Hollywood can fill the gaping hole inside him.
Chasing fame and fortune in Los Angeles.
Every evening, Matthew Perry’s father would arrive home from his day on set, pour himself a strong vodka tonic, and declare, “This is the best thing that’s happened to me all day.” It’s this attitude that the young boy would absorb during his early years in Los Angeles.
But while his dad was teaching him how to drink, Matthew was also learning how to act – it turned out he was quite good at pretending to be a different person.
By 1986 he’d gotten a few small parts, but nothing major. Then he impressed a director who saw him flirting with girls at a Hollywood diner, and was asked to perform in the film A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon. The movie flopped, but Matthew did become good friends with his costar, River Phoenix.
There was also a pattern emerging in his love life. As a quick-witted and charming young man, Matthew naturally attracted and subsequently slept with many women. However, whenever he found himself coming close to something that could be called a serious relationship, he would end it. His constant feelings of worthlessness left him thinking that if anyone got close enough to see the real him, they would leave. So he would leave first.
Eventually, Matthew developed an obsession with fame. There was a hole inside him, and he thought that being famous would fill it. But because he wasn’t yet famous, he filled that hole with vodka.
He was drinking every night. He was drinking a lot. And he was drinking secretly and alone. Alcohol was his best friend, and it made him feel comfortable. He was 24 years old.
Running out of money – and missing half his auditions – Matthew could feel his shot at fame slipping away. He begged his manager to get him a part in anything, and that’s how he found himself in the underwhelming sci-fi comedy L.A.X. 2194, about airport baggage handlers in the future.
It was around this time that the script for a show called Friends Like Us began generating buzz in Hollywood. Matthew read it, and found himself relating to one character in particular. As far as he was concerned, he was Chandler Bing.
His attachment to L.A.X. 2194 stopped him from auditioning, and the part of Chandler was offered to his friend Craig Bierko. But, in a fortunate twist of fate, Craig turned down the role, and the baggage handler show was not renewed for a second season. The stars were aligning, and Matthew had his shot at fame.
Alone in his small tenth-floor apartment, a desperate Matthew Perry got down on his knees and squeezed his eyes shut. “God,” he prayed. “You can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.”
Three weeks later, the sitcom that would come to be called Friends had found its final actor: Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing.
No one tells you what life is really like.
Shortly before the pilot of Friends aired, the director Jimmy Burrows gave each of the soon-to-be stars $100. He told them to go gamble and have fun, because soon they would never have the chance to do that in public again.
And he was right. The actors all had immediate chemistry which translated to the screen, and the 8:30 p.m. time slot – right between Seinfeld and Mad About You – made Friends an instant hit.
Matthew Perry was happy. He knew he was in a very fortunate position, and was determined not to mess it up. The atmosphere on set was open and creative – anyone could pitch a joke, and if it was funny enough, it would be used. Matthew pitched the most – for himself as well as for the other characters.
The character of Chandler quickly became a fan favorite. When Julia Roberts was asked to guest star in season two, she agreed to on the condition that she could be part of Chandler’s storyline. This led to a lengthy courtship between Julia and Matthew, conducted over fax, which resulted in a short relationship. And as with all his relationships, Matthew ended it – not because the relationship was going badly, but because he was scared she would inevitably abandon him first.
All through these years Matthew was still struggling with addiction. He kept it a secret and never drank on set, but he quickly learned that fame wasn’t filling the hole like he thought it would. He still needed vodka for that.
And then things began to escalate.
After finishing filming for season two of Friends, Matthew began working on his first major movie: Fools Rush In. One day, after shooting, he ignored safety warnings and decided to ride a Jet Ski that was available on a nearby lake. After inevitably falling off and being rescued by the film crew, Matthew found himself in a lot of pain. A doctor gave him a single pill of Vicodin and told him everything would be fine.
When the pill kicked in on his drive home, something clicked. Just like with his first drink when he was 14, everything was perfect, and the world made sense. A year and a half later, he was popping 55 of those pills a day.
This led to the first of many detoxes in rehab, at the age of 26. But it didn’t stick, and the drinking and drugs got worse. He kept to his rule of never taking anything on set, but every day he would come to work on Friends with a terrible hangover; one time he had to be nudged awake by costar Matt LeBlanc. Not even pancreatitis at the age of 30 made him get his act together.
His fellow cast members were growing concerned, and Jennifer Aniston even staged a small intervention in his trailer. Things were bad – and they weren’t getting better.
In May of 2001, the characters Monica and Chandler got married. It was one of the most iconic moments in the entire show. Matthew Perry was living in rehab at the time.
Life after Friends.
One by one, the characters place their apartment keys on the empty counter – first Monica, then Chandler, Joey, Ross, Rachel, and finally Phoebe. Matthew Perry had specifically requested to have the last word on the show, so when Rachel suggests getting one final coffee, Chandler responds with perfect comedic timing: “Sure… where?”
“Embryonic Journey” by Jefferson Airplane plays, the camera pans to the back of the apartment door, and the assistant director shouts “That’s a wrap!” for the last time. After 237 episodes, Friends is finally over.
The cast is emotional, and everyone is crying – except Matthew Perry. Maybe it’s the buprenorphine he’s taking as part of his latest detox, or maybe he’s just dead inside, but Matthew feels nothing.
As he walks around the set, reflecting on this fun, creative job that had been like a home for the last ten years, there is one thought that’s troubling him: What will become of me now?
Matthew had reached a point where he was now drinking and using to try and forget how much he was drinking and using. While never suicidal, he was prepared to die if that was a consequence of the drugs he needed.
But underneath all of this, Matthew felt incredibly lonely. He had just broken up with another girlfriend before she could get to know him enough to break up with him first. He returned to a life of one-night stands and friends with benefits, avoiding the danger of an emotional connection.
Eventually, Matthew found himself in a rehab center called Cirque Lodge, in Sunny Valley, Utah. In this beautifully located and well-staffed facility, he met a counselor named Burton who gave him a new perspective. Burton accused Matthew of enjoying the drama and chaos of his addiction.
Matthew realized that this was true. Drugs no longer gave him what he needed – he kept going back to escape from … what? His alcoholism and addiction. It was a vicious and absurd cycle, and something needed to change.
He came out of Cirque Lodge healthy and happy. While this wouldn’t be the end of his substance abuse problems – no, that would come with the burst colon in 2018 – he had a new outlook on life. He wanted to fill the hole inside him with activism, doing whatever he could to help others dealing with addiction.
He invested half a million dollars into an organization that established sober living houses in LA, even turning his own Malibu house into a place for addicts to recover after leaving rehab. He also did publicity work, where he advocated for drug courts – institutions that decriminalize nonviolent addicts, offering them care and treatment instead of jail time.
A therapist once told Matthew, “Reality is an acquired taste.” After 15 stints in rehab, thousands of AA meetings and therapy sessions, and around $7 million spent on trying to get sober, Matthew Perry was finally starting to get a taste for reality.
Final summary
So, how’s Matthew Perry doing now?
At the time of writing his memoir, he is 52 years old. He no longer drinks, does drugs, or even smokes – but he lives with the scars and regrets of the life he’s led. He longs for a romantic companion and kids, haunted by all the relationships he unfairly ended because he was scared in a way that took him a long time to understand.
But when the fog clears from his head in the morning, and he takes in the beautiful view from his California house overlooking the ocean, he has one overwhelming feeling: gratitude.
He is grateful to still be alive, when he knows he shouldn’t be. He is grateful for his loving family, who stuck by him during his darkest hours. He is grateful for the show Friends, and for the amazing actors he worked with. And he is grateful for all the sober companions, sponsors, and doctors who kept him alive and helped him not ruin the great opportunity he was given.
He no longer lives in fear of relapsing – he is surrounded by a loving and caring support network. He finally has a taste for life, and he’s curious and ready for what will come next.
Addiction – the Big Terrible Thing – can be beaten. It happens one day at a time, and with a lot of help, but it can be done. Matthew Perry never gave up, and that’s why he’s still alive.
He wants you to know that if he can do it, anyone can.