Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry

Biography
TW: Addiction
Relapse Recovery
Emotional
Will make you laugh and cry at the same time - HAVE TISSUES NEARBY!
Current Events
Eye Opening

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: Biography & Memoir
Start Date: August 17, 2024
End Date: August 28, 2024

I knew when this came out I wanted to read it - having been a later fan of Friends, not getting into the show until I was in my 20’s, when it was nearly wrapped up. As usual, it went on my TBR (To Be Read) list, with over 1000+ other books, until I could get to it.

One year later, Matthew Perry was found dead in his hot tub. Initial findings - drowning, but awaiting toxicology. Like many other peopl, I of course thought about his openess with addiction, and wonder if he had relapsed. At the time of this book, he was clean. About 18 month after his death, arrests were made - and that’s when I decided to pick up the book.

Reading this book after his death was a real eye opener. I don’t think it would have had the same effect on me if I had read it while he was still alive.

It’s funny (ironic, not funny haha), you think someone is famous, on a hit TV show and getting movie roles, has fancy houses and assistants… but you can still be at rock bottom. Matthew Perry shows just that in this book - even while filming Friends, he was using. He talks about how you can tell - his heavier years in the show - alcohol induced. Skinny years? Doped up on pills. There were points where he was in daytime rehab and filming in the evenings. But even through rehab, while he did well while doing INPATIENT rehab, once he was out, the cravings came back, and he gave in every time. He was taking enough pills and drugs to kill himself several times over. He knew it, the doctors knew it (this was before there were safeguards put into place, but let’s be honest - if you have money, money talks). He even talks in his memoir about trying Ketamine, and how it wasn’t the drug for him. How he was using it for his depression, and how he felt he might die every time he was on it. That literally shook me.

Which has now come out in the arrests since his death - messages between doctors, dealers, and Perry’s own assitant, asking, “How much do you think this moron will pay?” There’s a price for eveything - in this case, a human life cut too short.