October 23, 2022
"[Matthew] Perry describes carrying his top teeth to the dentist in a baggie in his jeans pocket."
"(He bit into a slice of peanut butter toast and they fell out, he writes: 'Yes, all of them.')... He recalls the time Jennifer Aniston came to his trailer and said, 'in a kind of weird but loving way,' that the group knew he was drinking again. 'We can smell it,' she said — and, he writes, 'the plural "we" hits me like a sledgehammer.' Another time, the cast confronted him in his dressing room. Perry also drops a sad bombshell about his onscreen wedding: 'I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of my highest point in "Friends," the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician."'"
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42 comments:
Get it together, son!
"Helmed"? That's the "garner" of tomorrow. It started showing up in movie journalism a few years ago. Now it's poised to take over.
I saw Matthew Perry's People cover in the drug store. I thought it was Sam Shepherd or Joe Scarborough and he'd been sleeping under bridges for a year.
Did you have a favorite friend? Was Ross your least favorite?
Losing teeth that way is one of my more recurrent nightmares over the course of my life, and I have good teeth.
Haven't we all been in this same situation at some point in our lives?
You had me at colostomy bags and Pickleball.
Yet another case of someone who could not cope with fame and fortune. He’s scarcely the first. Sadly, he’s unlikely to be the last.
"an Addiction Memoir/In 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,' the actor gets serious about sobriety, mortality, colostomy bags and pickleball"
Always the same story. Such memoirs write themselves.
The show went to a lot of trouble to keep him well enough to keep making money for them.
Sobriety is such an important thing to talk about. We have so many addicted people in this country, and gaining sobriety is an absolute triumph. These stories need to be told and shared. There shouldn't be anything shameful about it.
I'm glad he wrote this book.
I think people care more about the Ross and Rachel thing than they do about Chandler and Monica.
If Perry is still sober after all this time, since the end of Friends let’s say, it’s not a good look to go back and dump on the people who might’ve been trying to help you. That king of talk is common among sobriety newbie’s, who, (for the most part) still not entirely owning up to their addiction. It takes time to drop that kind of talk. I would even speculate, it takes longer to get really sober than it does to get addicted.
The actor who played Draco Malfoy as a child in the Harry Potter movies also has an addiction memoir out now.
You read about rich Victorians dying of dissipation in their 20s, but it doesn't seem like something people do now, with pills and heroin available to speed things along.
I remember Bill Bennett saying that when he became GHWB's Drug Czar, he was shocked to find the USG wasn't funding research into chemical ways to stop addiction. I'm betting it still doesn't.
I wonder if any celebrity memoir rises to the level of literature. I've read four of them during the course of a long life. The only one that stands out is that of Milton Berle. I don't think he had a ghost writer. He brags about his penis size and documents his affair with Marilyn Monroe. He writes how important dressing up as a woman was for his career and details how he did this on the day his mother died. He had a lot of issues that weren't worked out in therapy. It was an interesting book in a train wreck kind of way.....Gerold Frank was the brand name ghostwriter for celebs. My sister used to read them and pass them on to me. I read Beloved Infidel and Too Much, Too Soon. One was the memoir of Sheila Graham and catalogued her affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The other was the memoir of Diana Barrymore and her struggles with alcohol. I can't remember anything about them, but they made movies out of them and allowed the celeb involved to cash a check.....I prefer to read the reviews of celeb memoirs, rather than the actual memoirs. Maybe someday some celeb will write something interesting beyond the gossip and shock factor, but I don't know as it has ever happened.
I'm surprised he hadn't already had fake teeth at that point in his career.
I didn't think any Hollywood stars had their own teeth anymore...
His brain is wired now to release dopamine only in certain situations.
Addiction works by reinforcing the pathways that get used and the parts of the brain that do things other than what you are addicted to wither.
The only difference between an "addicted" brain and a "healthy" brain is what the brain is trained to release dopamine and other neuromodulators in response to.
It takes a lot of work and a lot of effort to repair this.
You have to train yourself to be happy about and react to and reward your mind by doing the things you want to do.
He will almost certainly not be able to do it on his own.
Just another chump in a long line of chumps. And, he's nowhere near the front of the line.
To his credit, he didn't relieve his burden through self-abortion, and remains viable to see another day, tell another tale, exhale CO2 for a green environment. The wicked solution is neither a good nor exclusive choice.
Losing teeth that way is one of my more recurrent nightmares over the course of my life, and I have good teeth.
If you mean literal nightmares, I seem to recall this one is a Freudian archetypal dream - am I remembering that right? Can't recall what is supposed to signify.
Too bad,
He seems like a talented, handsome, athletic, smart guy with a lively sense of humor. That's a rough road.
On the good-news side: from him, it looks like the Sackler family made more money. I'm told they like that.
[Matthew] Perry describes carrying his top teeth to the dentist in a baggie in his jeans pocket.
Chandler BrundleFly
File under insect politics.
"...also has an addiction memoir out now."
Seems like the publishing industry put on a push for a raft of these things and it's going to be a hella holiday reading season.
From the same elitist entertainment industry that wants us all to sterilize our children and die, so upping the "depressing reads that'll make you consider suicide" quotient is probably intentional at this point.
"Just another chump in a long line of chumps."
It's not called the "Chumpenproletariat" for nothin', chump.
Ralph L said..."I remember Bill Bennett saying that when he became GHWB's Drug Czar, he was shocked to find the USG wasn't funding research into chemical ways to stop addiction. I'm betting it still doesn't."
It does. Unfortunately, it is an extraordinarily challenging research topic.
Here is some general information from the two most relevant NIH institutes:
- National Institute on Drug Abuse: Treatment Research
- National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism: Research
Being famous and wealthy is not an asset when one is trying to get and stay sober.
I blame the parents, climate change, second hand smoke, fast food, chlorinated water. But most of all, boomers.
Sudden fame and fortune, all thrown away on a peanut butter addiction.
How many more stories like this will we have to see before the problem is recognized?
So . . . he was the inspiration for Smellycat?
Get famous. Get rich. Become addicted. Career fades. Then write the tell all book later on when you desire relevancy. Hit the talk show circuit and hear the applause again. Then fade back into irrelevancy. Rinse. Repeat.
"Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth" - Character Henry Chinaski (played by Mikey Rourke) - Barfly - 1987
If you want to be famous AND immortalized you have to die from your addiction prior to writing the tell all book and hitting the talk show circuit.
To fuck, or not to fuck... with your body, your mind, that is the first choice and consent.
I'm in the middle of reading "Waxing On," Ralph Macchio's autobiography. No drug addiction horror stories, no sex scandals. Just a regular-guy actor who kept his nose clean, lived a normal life mostly away from Hollywood, who's been married for 35 years to the same woman he met at a birthday party when he was 16. Yes, there were some slow, frustrating years where his eternally young looks may have limited him. But he never lost his head or gave into self-destructiveness over it. Now, he and his co-star William Zabka (another down-to-earth good guy), are experiencing a career renaissance with their hit show, the highly entertaining"Cobra Kai". Macchio's book may not be as lurid or contain tales of months-long comas, colostomy bags, and losing ones teeth to a PBJ sandwich. But it is kind of a relief to see that some nice guys really don't have to finish last, after all. In fact, some may end up doing just fine in spite of the entertainment industry's many pitfalls.
Drunk-a-logs.
If you live in Madison, you can find at least three AA meetings on Sunday night. Chances are you can hear this story at least once at each of them. Sadly the story is always just as sad, or worse. Search the list of meetings and if they are labeled 'speaker'. You will get 45 minutes of one speaker telling their story of drinking, and finding recovery.
"It does. Unfortunately, it is an extraordinarily challenging research topic."
Yeah. They're baffled.
Jamie wrote:
"If you mean literal nightmares, I seem to recall this one is a Freudian archetypal dream - am I remembering that right? Can't recall what is supposed to signify."
Interesting. I don't know what it means for me, but when I have the dream I have an overwhelming sense of doom- a true nightmare.
I may be in the minority here, but I always thought Friends was a terrible show, though Perry's character got nearly all the best lines. But I don't blame him for drinking. Many people are stuck in jobs where they do nothing of real value to society, and alcohol helps deaden the impact. What one gets paid to do these jobs is irrelevant. Would you rather be Bryan Cranston, or Matthew Perry, making the same money? People will pick Cranston every time.
Also, I hardly consider myself any sort of LGBT ally, but there were a LOT of negative gay jokes on Friends. A lot.
Friends in low places
As an athiest, I love Friends. And Peanut butter sandwhiches.
Not a fan of losing all my teeth.
but that's how i roll.
He seems like a nice guy - but - eh there are hundreds of thousands of people just like him who are not famous and rich. and they didn't fair so well.
Glad to see you are alright and have gotten your drift back.
In old sailing ships the wheel was towards the back. I can imagine a truck being "helmed" by somebody in the back and wonder how well that would have worked. I guess in modern boats the wheel is more in the front and often more like an auto steering wheel.
I think I watched one entire episode and only that because it had Chris Isaak in it. Was that the one where the radiator in the girls' apartment was running too hot and they were trying to find someone to fix it, but then one of the guys just popped over and bled it? I remember that one, too.
This is why, despite going through a couple of periods where I drank probably too often, I would never call myself an alcoholic. I feel like it would be insulting to real alcoholics.
Like @Blair, I was no fan of Friends, either, but I chalk that up to being too old to connect with the characters. However I did watch Perry's short-lived update of "The Odd Couple" when it was on. I thought it was well done - the casting was good and writing snappy. Alas, given Perry's addiction issue, this likely was why the show only lasted one season.
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