Soon enough, Perry found himself with 55 Vicodins on the daily. Alcohol came later.
Content warning for discussions of substance abuse
The ways that Matthew Perry could make us cry couldn’t be more sundry. On a good day, it would be of laughter, of the Emmy-nominated role that won him his name and his fame. On a difficult one, it would be of pure and utter despair. Where he would describe his continuous battle with addiction, the one that he thought shaped his meaning.
It all started in 1997 when Perry suffered from a skiing accident on the set of When Fools Rush In. That day, he was prescribed opioids, specifically an addictive dose of Vicodin. Ever since, the drug consumed his every thought, every impulse. Soon enough, Perry found himself with 55 Vicodins on the daily. Alcohol came later.
His sobriety wavered as years went by, his weight fluctuated between 225 and 128 pounds in a matter of years. In season 9 of the sitcom Friends, Perry was nominated for his Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. Amazingly enough, Perry claimed in an interview with People to be sober for the entirety of it. At that point, he was being driven to and from the set of Friends.
“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.“
In 2007, Perry met West Huddleston, who was the head of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals at the time. Through the non-profit’s website, their “why” can be read as follows:“We believe that the justice system can and must offer alternatives to incarceration that reduce the negative impact of justice involvement and provide pathways to hope and healing.”
Through Huddleston, Perry was inspired. In 2013, he was awarded the Champion of Recovery Award by former President Obama’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.
That same year, Perry was found debating with Peter Hitchens and Baroness Meacher on the BBC’s current affairs programme Newsnight; Hitchens being a controversial broadcaster and author, while Meacher an advocate for drug policy reform. He classed Hitchens as “a complete tool” in his memoir: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in November of 2022, which outlines his struggles with addiction, work with addiction, and his time on Friends.
Both Meacher and Perry were repelled by Hitchens’ view on addiction, as Hitchens himself went on to claim that classifying addiction as a “disease” was wrong on behalf of the American Medical Association (AMA). Perry, on the other hand, claimed, “I’m a drug addict. My life is, ‘If I have a drink, I can’t stop.’ And so it would be following your ideology that I’m choosing to do that.”
In February of 2017, Hitchens published The Fantasy of Addiction, where he further supports the arguments that arose between him and the late Perry.
It was also in 2013 that Perry opened the Perry House, a facility where sober men could build a life past their disease. Funnily enough, it used to be his Malibu mansion. It ran for two consecutive years, until his property sold for 10.7 million dollars in 2015. He detailed later that it came out to be too expensive, and that they would move the facility somewhere less costly.
Although despite all the work he had done towards his sober way of living, this wasn’t the end of the battle for him. According to Perry himself in his memoir, he had been to 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings, detoxed, and had been to rehab numerous times over the course of his life. His journey to sobriety cost him close to 9 million dollars. Despite this, throughout his time, he continually advocated against addiction.
Now in 2018, at the ripe age of 49, Perry’s colon exploded due to an overuse of opioids. 2 weeks in a coma, and tied to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which controlled both his heart and breath, the chances of him living were extremely slim. Fortunately for the Friends star, he beat the odds, and was given a second chance at life. It was a couple of years later that he published his best-selling memoir: Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
On October 28th, he passed away at 54.
Perry didn’t want to be remembered for his time on Friends, even if it was how many people had learned to recognize his name. At the end of the day, in his final years, he wanted his name to mean more than a one-liner. He wanted his story to act as a motivator for those suffering from the disease. If Perry has taught us anything, it’s never to surrender the battle with yourself. Because, no matter how much you may lose faith, everyone was meant for something more.
- Editors note: the file photo for this story was changed on Aug. 14 because of ownership concerns of the original file photo.
