October 30, 2023

"You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol..."

"... when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills. By the end of season three, I was spending most of my time figuring out how to get 55 Vicodin a day — I had to have 55 every day, otherwise I’d get so sick... [Notice] how I look between the final episode of season 6 and the first of season 7 — the Chandler-Monica proposal episodes. I’m wearing the same clothes in the final episode of six and the first of seven [it’s supposed to be the same night], but I must have lost fifty pounds in the off-season. My weight varied between 128 pounds and 225 pounds during the years of Friends."

Wrote Matthew Perry, quoted in "Matthew Perry Revealed Before His Death Why He Never Watched Friends/ The actor — who died aged 54 on Saturday — last year shared why he could not watch himself as Chandler Bing on the iconic sitcom" (People).

And here's an interview from last year, when he was promoting his memoir. He says he couldn't watch the show, because he'd be looking at himself and seeing what substance he was struggling with....

34 comments:

Sebastian said...

He "revealed" it, did he. It's an "incredible" story, right.

Always the same damn story, and nothing revelatory or incredible about it.

Oligonicella said...

I've had a couple friends die of overdose. It was an easy tell that they were addicted. If it was uppers, they looked much like a chemo patient. If downers, they looked liked slugs.

These are not immediate effects but inevitable.

To see some real pictures of the effects of meth, search "pictures of meth before and after".

Mark said...

Maybe the showrunners should have done him a decent favor and suspended him from the show and throw him in rehab.

Jamie said...

The poor, poor man.

re Pete said...

"China doll, alcohol, duality, mortality

Mercury rules you and destiny fools you

Like the plague, with a dangerous wink

And there’s no time to think"

wild chicken said...

Geez, I like drugs and all but compared to the average dope fiend I'm such a piker.

They do so much, so often, mixed with other drugs. It offends the sensibilities. Like the polypharma found in Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I can't relate. But they were ¡mas famoso! so that.

Owen said...

Poor b******. It's hard to watch. The question hangs in the air: did nobody notice? Did nobody try to intervene? Was this another "Kitty Genovese" case? (Yes, yes, that reference dates me terribly; and in fact its "official" work-up may have been wrong; but IMHO it's still useful short-hand for "the cowardly or lazy assumption that somebody is dealing with an urgent mortal crisis").

Paul said...

Like Whitney Houston... stoned and drowned in a tub... pathetic loser. No more, no less.

Owen said...

Poor b******. It's hard to watch. The question hangs in the air: did nobody notice? Did nobody try to intervene? Was this another "Kitty Genovese" case? (Yes, yes, that reference dates me terribly; and in fact its "official" work-up may have been wrong; but IMHO it's still useful short-hand for "the cowardly or lazy assumption that somebody else is dealing with an urgent mortal crisis").

Lars Porsena said...

A Hollywood/Rock cliche

Tom T. said...

Went to rehab 15 times. But such a cash cow that you know he must have had any number of people enabling him. Imagine being the production assistant tasked with getting him 55 Vicodin every day.

n.n said...

So, he self-aborted with a progressive condition.

walter said...

Up to 6 weeks for tox report.
Claim is that he played pickleball that morning.
Hmm.

Earnest Prole said...

Free at last.

Howard said...

This tragic story is repeated everyday throughout the United States dealing with the opioid addiction menace brought to you by lightly regulated free market capitalistic Enterprise.

So stay focused on the brown people playing loud rap music while the rich white people who made billions upon billions from mass murder continue to breathe free air inside their opulent mansions

walter said...

Howie,
Do you think addicts get their opioids in those quantities on the legal market?
Your folks imposed their will to keep me from getting an Ivermectin rx filled.
How 'bout you tell your boy Joementia to "regulate" the border where Fentanyl is pouring in, amongst the rape trees, child trafficking and unknown numbers of fighting age men on watch lists.
Semper Fudd!

Joe Smith said...

He's listed at around 5'11" to 6' tall. So about where I was before shrinking : )

225 pounds is dad-bod chunky. 128 pounds is skeletal and cause for hospitalization.

I went from 210 to 160 once just because. My wife hated me at 160 and insisted I put on 15 pounds.

He must have been good at performing with all of his problems or else the producers would have surely replaced him.

Joe Smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
BarrySanders20 said...

"Matthew Perry Revealed Before His Death Why He Never Watched Friends." Is it important to clarify that he revealed this before his death? Anyway, now, before my death, I reveal that I have something in common with Friendly Matt (who the media and women must really like!)

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

People who live in their heads... need to do more charity work. Do something for someone else.

BarrySanders20 said...

Howard thinks people in pain should not have access to opioids because other people abuse them. Also, light regulation, free markets, capitalism, and free enterprise are the reasons why some people abuse opioids. Best choose the opposite to solve this problem.

If you want to see free markets at work, look at how heroin, and then fentanyl, filled the gap when the feds shut down the easy pickings of legal, regulated drug manufacturers who made a safe (but abused by some) product and the legal, regulated doctors who prescribed the safe (but abused by some)drugs. Who could have ever seen that coming?

Yancey Ward said...

I noticed the weight changes at the time. I had always just assumed that he was on a diet yoyo- it was really only years later that I learned he had severe substance abuse problems.

Narayanan said...

so goes my theory about watching self on video to improve self-awareness for therapy goals

dgstock said...

55 Vicodin per day? That would be about 17 grams of acetaminophen, way above the toxic dose.

Yancey Ward said...

What BarrySanders20 wrote at 11:37 a.m.

The sudden and effective commercial/legal prohibition against prescription opioids is almost certainly killing more addicts than were dying previously. I think I recently wrote about my experience at finding a primary care physician, but I don't remember if it was here that I wrote about it. I visited several local clinics at the beginning of August to find one that could get me in before Spring of 2024, and in every single one, no matter the ownership, every one of them had a disclaimer right out in front that they do not prescribe pain medication. That is a big change in the last 5-6 years- it wasn't that way when I still took my father to his various doctor appointments. It made me wonder what one does if one is someone who does need prescription pain medications for chronic conditions. Glad I am not one of those.

Tom T. said...

A Hollywood/Rock cliche

54, coincidentally, is twice 27. So he lived as long as two rock musicians.

James K said...

Maybe I'm a terrible person, but I find it hard to gin up a lot of sympathy for these celebrity drug addicts. With their resources they can get lots of help, and if they're so far gone that they can't or won't get help, where are their families and friends? Just content to enjoy his wry sense of humor as he self-destructs?

Jamie said...

Is it important to clarify that he revealed this before his death?

I don't know, with a properly licensed and certified medium...

walter said...

It seems like yesterday he was pimping his "Could I be any more vaccinated?" shirt.

Howard said...

Opioids are not good for chronic pain. Having suffered crippling bilateral bone on bone hip arthritis for 6+ years in the late 1990s-early 2000s, I thank my lucky stars for never touching that stuff. I sure as shit used it for short-term post surgical recovery. I still have a bunch of Vic's and Oxy's left over from all of my previous surgical recoveries which are quite numerous. My rule of thumb with opiates is to limit them to one dose per day for a maximum of 5-days in a row. Beyond that, find something else.

I have found the best pain relief for chronic and acute pain is CBD. The higher dose, the better. Full spectrum 120-mg dose 1-month supply is ~$60. If you make it yourself from hemp buds, the cost is about $20/month. CBD seizure research shows up to 12mg/Kg/day is safe for kids (~1,000-mg/day for a 200-lb adult).

I don't need it anymore, but if I did, I would go right back to it.

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Crook Biden's open southern border for the win.

Iman said...

A very sad story. RIP.

Jamie said...

With their resources they can get lots of help, and if they're so far gone that they can't or won't get help, where are their families and friends?

I know, but... addiction is a terrible master. The love, including the tough love, of family and friends may not be enough.

If you have nothing in your life that you sometimes have the creeping feeling you can't do without, excellent - I can't claim that. I use no drugs but alcohol, and that with care, because I know the addiction history in my own family and know that it's already too easy for me to get "hooked" on non-drug things (blogs, for instance...), to the point where my addiction, if it is one, affects my daily life.

I'm scared to death of something like cocaine, having been told by people who have tried it that it feels way too good, and only their relative poverty at the time they tried it kept them from immediately seeking out more. I'm not nearly poor enough to chance it.

MacMacConnell said...

I liked Friends for a couple of seasons and Perry starred in a couple of good movies. He had a privileged up bring and started his drug & alcohol addictions at an early age. He was a funny guy, but to me his most redeeming quality is that he beat the shit out of Justin Pierre James Trudeau in prep school. RIP Mathew.