book review matthew perry

The One Where Matthew Perry Writes an Addiction Memoir

In “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” the actor gets serious about sobriety, mortality, colostomy bags and pickleball.

By the time he was 49, Matthew Perry writes in his new book, he had spent more than half of his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities. Credit... Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times

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By Elisabeth Egan

• Published Oct. 23, 2022 Updated June 20, 2023

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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When I pictured Matthew Perry, the actor frequently known as Chandler Bing, I saw him on the tangerine couch at Central Perk or seated on one of the twin recliners in the apartment he shared with Joey Tribbiani.

In September, after arriving at his 6,300-square-foot rental house and being ushered through a driveway gate by his sober companion, I sat across from Perry, who perched on a white couch in a white living room, a world away from “Friends,” the NBC sitcom that aired for 10 seasons and catapulted all six of its stars into fame, fortune and infinite memes. Instead of the foosball table where Chandler, Joey, Monica, Phoebe, Rachel and Ross gathered, nudging each other through the first chapters of adulthood, Perry, 53, had a red felt pool table that looked untouched. There was plenty of light in the house, but not a lot of warmth.

I have watched every episode of “Friends” three times — in prime time, on VHS and on Netflix — but I’m not sure I would have recognized Perry if I’d seen him on the street. If he was an ebullient terrier in those 1990s-era Must See TV days — as memorable for his full-body comedy as he was for the inflection that made “Can you BE any more [insert adjective]” the new “Gag me with a spoon” — he now seemed more like an apprehensive bulldog, with the forehead furrows to match.

As his former co-star Lisa Kudrow confesses in the foreword to his memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” the first question people ask about “Friends” is often “How’s Matthew Perry doing?”

Perry answers that question in the book, which Flatiron will publish on Nov. 1, by starkly chronicling his decades-long cage match with drinking and drug use. His addiction led to a medical odyssey in 2018 that included pneumonia, an exploded colon, a brief stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag, more than a dozen stomach surgeries, and the realization that, by the time he was 49, he had spent more than half of his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities.

Most of this is covered in the prologue. At one point, he writes in a parenthetical, “Please note: for the next few paragraphs, this book will be a biography rather than a memoir because I was no longer there.”

The book is full of painful revelations, including one about short-lived, alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction, and another in which 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.”)

Quietly and then, as he relaxed, at a volume that allowed me to stop worrying about my recording device, Perry settled into the conversation about his substance abuse. It started with Budweiser and Andrès Baby Duck wine when he was 14, then ballooned to include vodka by the quart, Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin. He drew the line at heroin, a choice he credits with saving his life.

“I would fake back injuries. I would fake migraine headaches. I had eight doctors going at the same time,” Perry said. “I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it. When you’re a drug addict, it’s all math. I go to this place, and I need to take three. And then I go to this place, and I’m going to take five because I’m going to be there longer. It’s exhausting but you have to do it or you get very, very sick. I wasn’t doing it to feel high or to feel good. I certainly wasn’t a partyer; I just wanted to sit on my couch, take five Vicodin and watch a movie. That was heaven for me. It no longer is.”

Perry said he had been clean for 18 months, which means that he was newly drug- and alcohol-free when the “Friends” reunion aired in May 2021.

“I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he estimated.

Most addicts don’t have Perry’s resources. But they have what he called “the gift of anonymity,” while his bleakest moments have been photographed, chronicled and occasionally mocked. For the record, Perry isn’t a huge fan of secrecy as it pertains to Alcoholics Anonymous, where he sponsors three members. He explained: “It suggests that there’s a stigma and that we have to hide. This is not a popular opinion, by the way.”

Perry’s demeanor brightened when we talked about pickleball, his latest obsession. He built a court at the house he’s moving into in the Palisades. He plays with friends and hired pros. He said, “I thought it would be a good idea, to pump myself up, to play pickleball before this interview, but basically I’m about to fall asleep in your lap.”

So what inspired him to write a book?

After his extended stay in a Los Angeles hospital, Perry started tapping out his life story on the Notes app on his phone. When he hit 110 pages, he showed them to his manager, who told him to keep going. He worked at his dining room table for about two hours a day, no more: “It was hard to face all this stuff.”

Perry has written for television (“The Odd Couple,” “Mr. Sunshine”) before but, “writing a book I had not really thought of before,” he said. “Whenever I bumped into something that I didn’t really want to share, I would think of the people that I would be helping, and it would keep me going.”

Over the course of the next hour, Perry returned to the idea of helping fellow addicts 15 times. The dedication at the front of the book reads: “For all of the sufferers out there. You know who you are.”

He said: “It’s still a day-to-day process of getting better. Every day. It doesn’t end because I did this.”

The memoir came together without a ghostwriter, which is rare for household-name authors. Megan Lynch, the senior vice president and publisher at Flatiron, said of the proposal she read last year: “There was a real voice to it. It was clear that he was going to share intimate details not just about his time on the show but about his entire life, and that felt revelatory. I’m not working on an assembly line of books by celebrities and it’s something as an editor I want to be very choosy about. For me, this really rose to a level that I do not ordinarily see.”

Lynch, who watched “Friends” when she was 14 and credits it with providing a vision for a future life in New York City, added, “Unlike any celebrity that I think anyone has ever worked with, Matthew turned in his manuscript ahead of the deadline.”

Although Perry hopes that “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing” will eventually be shelved in the self-help section of bookstores, “Friends” fans will find poignant nuggets in its pages. Perry writes gratefully and glowingly of the 10 seasons he and his co-stars worked together, earning $1 million per episode at their peak.

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.”

In a phone interview, Kudrow said: “It’s a hideous disease, and he has a tough version of it. What’s not changing is his will to keep going, keep fighting and keep living.”

She added: “I love Matthew a lot. We’re part of a family. I’m basically ending this with ‘I’ll be there for you’ [the ‘Friends’ theme song], but it’s true. I’ll always be there for him.”

Perry’s childhood friends Christopher and Brian Murray echoed this sentiment. “He’s gone through more than any human being I know and he’s come out on the good side of it,” said Brian, the older of the two brothers who have known Perry since first grade. Riding bikes around their rural corner of Ottawa, the trio would belt out the theme song from “The Rockford Files” and rib one another in the cadence that Perry later immortalized on “Friends.”

“A lot of it was tough to understand,” Christopher said. “You wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Fundamentally, his personality and his heart are absolutely in the same place they were when he was a kid.”

Failed relationships were among the hardest things to write about, Perry said (“I’m lonely, but there’s a couple of people on the payroll to keep me safe”), though he hopes to marry and have children in the future. “I think I’d be a great father,” he said.

Eighteen years after “Friends” aired its last episode, Perry is tickled by its staying power, and its popularity among the children of its original viewers. “There are 15-year-old people wandering around, seeing me and wondering why I look so old,” he said.

When I mentioned I’d seen a young woman in my hotel gym wearing a “Friends” sweatshirt — you rarely see merch from, say, “E.R.,” which capped off NBC’s Thursday night lineup in the ’90s — he laughed. “You should set me up with that girl,” he said. “Just say, I know this guy, he’s as single as they come.”

Perry’s candid, darkly funny book now earns him an honorary folding chair — and shelf space — beside David Carr , Caroline Knapp , Leslie Jamison , Nic Sheff , Sarah Hepola and other authors who have explored the minute-to-minute, tooth-and-nail skirmish of recovery.

“There is a hell,” Perry writes. “Don’t let anyone tell you different. I’ve been there; it exists; end of discussion.”

He said, “Now I feel better because it’s out. It’s out on a piece of paper. The ‘why’ I’m still alive is definitely in the area of helping people.”

Audio produced by Tally Abecassis .

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Matthew Perry’s memoir – what the critics say

The Friends star’s bleak but witty autobiography is undeniably ‘fascinating’

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When Friends: The Reunion was broadcast last year, “all anybody could talk about was Matthew Perry”, said Eleanor Halls in The Daily Telegraph . It was clear that the man who “spent ten years cracking jokes in our living rooms”, as the “beloved” Friends character Chandler Bing, was in a very poor state: he had a bloated face, slurred speech, and “looked lonely and sad”.

Friends reunited for one-off special: ten best moments from the show Madly, Deeply by Alan Rickman: diary extracts packed with ‘profound’ observations

In his memoir, Perry, 53, explains what caused him to “appear so extinguished”. In his 20s, at the height of his fame, he became addicted to alcohol and opiates. He was soon taking 55 Vicodin pills a day, and “over the next 20 years, he would check into rehab 15 times, attend 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and undergo 14 stomach surgeries”. He has nearly died on several occasions and says he has spent more than $9m treating his addictions. All this is recounted in Perry’s bleak but “witty” book, which is laced with his “trademark sarcasm and self-deprecation”.

Perry was born in Canada, the son of a “beauty queen and an American folk singer-turned-actor”, said Allison Stewart in The Washington Post . When he was nine months old, his father, a “functioning alcoholic who starred in Old Spice commercials”, walked out and moved to LA; and from the age of five, Perry would fly to visit him wearing a sign that read “unaccompanied minor”.

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Perry emerged into adulthood believing that only one thing could relieve his “feelings of loneliness and inadequacy”: becoming famous. But landing a role on the biggest TV sitcom in history wasn’t the cure-all he expected. “I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realise they are the wrong dreams,” he notes.

This book begins, as most addiction memoirs do, with Perry at his “lowest ebb”, said Fiona Sturges in The Guardian . In 2019, he suffered an “explosion” of the bowel – a result of chronic constipation caused by opiate abuse – and spent nearly a year with a colostomy bag. “It was kind of poetic,” he writes. “I was so full of shit it nearly killed me.”

The experience prompted Perry to finally get clean, but even so, there is no “happy ending”: describing his life today, Perry writes of himself “sitting in a huge house, overlooking the ocean, with no one to share it with, save a sober companion, a nurse, and a gardener twice a week”. It’s a “maddening” book at times – Perry can be a “massive show-off” – but it’s undeniably “fascinating”. “The overwhelming sense is of a lonely, disappointed man in desperate need of a hug.”

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

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FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING

by Matthew Perry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2022

Strictly for Perry’s fans.

The TV star details his career and his major addiction issues.

"I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest that Chandler Bing transformed the way America spoke," writes Perry of his character on the megahit sitcom Friends , who habitually emphasized a different word in a sentence than one might expect. Could this be any bigger of a deal? Apparently not. "Aaron [Sorkin] and Tommy [Schlamme] had changed the way America looked at serialized TV with The West Wing , and I had changed how America spoke English,” writes the author. Certainly, plenty of readers will be interested in Perry's fabulous wealth and extraordinary fame—at one point in his life, he was one of the "most famous people in the world—in fact, I was being burned by the white-hot flame of fame”—his unsuccessful relationships with women, his 15 trips to rehab (“I have spent upward of $7 million to get sober”), numerous surgeries for the ravages of opioid-induced constipation, and his inability to add anything significant to his resume after Friends . However, Perry is a blurter, not a storyteller, and no ghostwriter or collaborator was involved in this project. Though he asserts that he does not blame his parents for his difficulties, the author sticks a major pin in the day they sent him on an airplane as an unaccompanied minor when he was 5 years old. Some will find it hard to sympathize with this story, and further mean-spirited outbursts don’t help—e.g., "Why is it that original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger died, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?" The concluding chapters trail off into what could be notes for some future acceptance speech. "I am me," he writes. "And that should be enough, it always has been enough." It’s not enough to carry this memoir.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022

ISBN: 9781250866448

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

In Matthew Perry’s memoir, a need for fame leads to 65 rehab stints

The first time Matthew Perry went through detox, he was already as famous as a Beatle, thanks to his role as Chandler Bing on the culture-shifting 1990s sitcom “Friends.” He was also an addict, tormented by a long list of demons that eventually included Vicodin (55 pills a day at his low point), alcohol, cocaine, Xanax and Suboxone. He went on to detox 65 more times, he estimates, spending millions of dollars and half of his ruined life in treatment facilities.

“Friends” lasted 10 seasons , and Perry was spiraling for most of them, according to his new memoir, the grimly funny, mostly unvarnished and frequently proctological “ Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing .” His struggles played out in front of millions of viewers every week. He writes, “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.”

The book arrives at a strange time, as our understanding of addiction grows and our tolerance for the problems of rich White men shrinks. It is both a conventional memoir and an account of the dire events of 2018, when Perry’s colon exploded, a presumed side effect of his opiate use. He fell into a coma. His family was told he had a 2 percent chance of survival. He spent five months in the hospital and nine months with a colostomy bag. He endured countless surgeries, a harrowing ordeal recounted in minute detail. By page 11, readers will become intimately familiar with the contents of his gastrointestinal tract.

In alternating chapters, the 53-year-old recalls his childhood in Canada as the son of a beauty queen and an American folk singer-turned-actor. His parents were young, ridiculously attractive and outmatched. At 2 months old, Perry was given barbiturates to stop him from crying. At age 5, he was sent as an unaccompanied minor to visit his father, who had left when Perry was 9 months old. “Not having a parent on that flight is one of the many things that led to a lifelong feeling of abandonment,” Perry writes.

Perry was a bottomless hole of neediness, desperate for approval from his mother. He vied for her attention against rivals that included his stepfather, local newscaster-turned-“Dateline” legend Keith Morrison, and glamorous Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, for whom she worked long hours as a press secretary. (In grade school, Perry writes, he beat up his son, future prime minister Justin Trudeau, in retaliation.)

Perry treats his stepfather with a distant affection, often referring to him as “Keith Morrison,” as if, like us, he was merely watching Keith Morrison on television. When an adult Perry wakes from a disorienting bender to find a worried Keith Morrison at the foot of his bed, he wonders at first if he is in a “Dateline” episode.

As a teenager, Perry moved to Los Angeles to live with his father, a functioning alcoholic who starred in Old Spice commercials. Perry soon followed in his father’s footsteps, simultaneously pursuing an acting career, alcoholism (he took his first drink at age 14) and, once his erectile dysfunction cleared up, an endless assortment of available women.

In a pattern that continues to this day, Perry, who longs for a family, falls for a number of perfectly suitable potential wives, but he rejects them before they can reject him. He even dated Julia Roberts, who would appear in a Season 2 episode after the Super Bowl, after courting her by fax. When he broke up with her two months later, she stared at him uncomprehendingly, as if such a thing had never happened before.

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Desperate for the fame he was certain would cure feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, Perry recalls kneeling on the floor of his tiny apartment and praying for the first time. “God, you can do whatever you want to me,” he writes. “Just please make me famous.” Three weeks later, he landed the role of Chandler after his close friend, fellow actor Craig Bierko, passed on it.

Perry, of course, became rich and famous, while Bierko — poor Craig Bierko! — became a trivia question. In one of the book’s most wincing passages, the men, estranged for years, reunite. Bierko admits to feeling jealous of Perry, who explains that fame does not fix a person anyway, which Perry treats as a major revelation, even though any reader of even one celebrity memoir has figured this out. Bierko does not appear to find this helpful.

“Friends” was the best job in the world, writes Perry. The cast members genuinely adored each other, and everyone got rich thanks to an early suggestion from David Schwimmer that the cast members negotiate their salaries as a team. By their 10th season, they were working an easy schedule. “We were making $1,100,040 an episode, and we were asking to do fewer episodes,” Perry recalls mournfully. “Morons, all of us.”

Perry plunged deeper into his addictions, which reached warp speed when he was introduced to painkillers after a jet skiing accident on a movie set. It is here that a familiar pattern emerges. Though he is occasionally, precariously sober, he spends most of the rest of the book shuttling between a series of increasingly posh rehab centers. He is sometimes better but never well. Everyone is always vaguely worried about him, but until a celebrity poses a direct threat to someone else’s livelihood, people tend to leave them to their own devices.

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Jennifer Aniston once attempted an awkward mini intervention, but it did not take. Aniston, like Keith Morrison and Perry’s eventual costar Bruce Willis, appears here as a warm, if half sketched, character. The more Perry likes a celebrity, the less he mentions them, as if out of professional courtesy.

Others bring out a latent sharpness that always seems to be simmering below Perry’s nice guy surface. He is (understandably) upset when a stoned Cameron Diaz accidentally hits him in the face. He repeatedly expresses unhappiness that Keanu Reeves, surely the most inoffensive person imaginable, is still alive. He is unhappy to report that former costar Salma Hayek “always had a very elaborate and lengthy idea about how to do a scene, but her long-winded ideas weren’t always helpful.” To normies, this may seem like mild criticism, but in the exaggeratedly polite way of famous people, it is a smackdown.

Perry’s wryly conversational and self-deprecating style will seem familiar to “Friends” viewers, like a smarter version of Chandler wrote a book. He is easy to like, if prickly, and as easy to relate to as someone with multiple Banksys and a talent for repeatedly blowing up their own life could be.

Years of Olympic-level addiction have blown out his pleasure receptors. Even if he wanted to relapse, the drugs probably would not work. He would change places with any of his poorer and less famous friends, even that one guy who has diabetes and lives in an apartment, if it meant his brain was no longer trying to kill him. “I would give it all up to not have that,” Perry writes. “No one believes this, but it’s true.”

Allison Stewart writes about pop culture, music and politics for The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. She is working on a book about the history of the space program.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

By Matthew Perry. Flatiron. 272 pp. $29.99.

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Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

Could this BE any more timely? Could this BE any sadder? Could he BE any more sorry about what he’s done to himself and others? The answer to these questions is NO, very much a NO.

Matthew Perry’s memoir, FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING, presents yet another chapter in one of the most popular television shows of all time. But he is very ready to address all of his personal demons in public. Perhaps by us knowing what has brought him to this point, he will feel seen and use our knowledge as a way to keep him on the straight and narrow path.

"Congratulations to [Matthew Perry] for being alive, first and foremost, and for writing a compelling, partly TMI book about one man’s battle against himself. Could there BE a more human story than that? I don’t think so."

There are plenty of memoirs in which celebrities tell you all about the behind-the-scenes horrors they have endured, but this book is different. Perry doesn’t really blame anyone but himself. And it’s a big deal to admit to everything one has done while masking pain in the giant world arena.

At a recent interview in Princeton, NJ, Perry looked wired but in a good way. He was sassy and spoke directly to the audience, echoing the sentiments put forth in his book: “I have an addictive personality, and now I can’t even be around drugs or alcohol.” He said he is pleased to be on the other side of this pain, but the people with whom he has burned bridges is a long and sad list.

Perry addresses his childhood, his attempts to be more like his father (the Old Spice guy from the ’80s), his brilliance at tennis (he was a junior champion in the US), his ability to keep the family peace as a people pleaser after his parents’ divorce, and his wandering into show business and the issues that arose when his dad, now remarried with a new family, grew jealous of him as “Friends” became a juggernaut.

He understands quite distinctly that his professional success did not make his personal shortcomings any easier, and the book is filled with the detritus of all the lost relationships with wonderful women (like Julia Roberts, Lizzy Caplan and Jamie Tarses, the latter of whom saved his life on more than one occasion) and the love he has fostered with his family. He is an AA advocate and has a newfound spirituality that gives him the strength to fight his addictions. This memoir is quite a journey.

There are a lot of details, physical ones, that make FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING feel a bit like a DARE notebook. It is a scared straight of sorts for those who think that addiction is not a disease (could they BE any more wrong?) This book could be handed to every kid who spent COVID lockdown watching “Friends” on repeat to remind them that drugs and alcohol never get rid of problems --- they only mask them.

Perry was part of a group of young actors, including Hank Azaria and Craig Bierko, who did not quite reach the heights that he did (although they have very successful careers), and how he became Chandler Bing is a story of fortune and destiny. He is more like the snarky, funny, vulnerable Chandler in person than he is in the book; in these pages he is forthright and funny at times, but angry and then resigned as his illness goes on.

To watch this handsome, talented man write so honestly about how his addiction and fears have turned him into a bachelor semi-recluse is a difficult read. As George Clooney once said, TV stars are like part of someone’s family: they are in your life like a family member, coming into your living room while you are resting in your underwear. We think of Chandler as someone we actually know. But Matthew Perry is a man, a survivor, an addict, a son, a friend --- a lot of things that FRIENDS, LOVERS, AND THE BIG TERRIBLE THING makes clear are now far more important to him than being an actor ever could be.

Congratulations to him for being alive, first and foremost, and for writing a compelling, partly TMI book about one man’s battle against himself. Could there BE a more human story than that? I don’t think so.

Reviewed by Jana Siciliano on November 21, 2022

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry

• Publication Date: November 1, 2022
• Genres: Memoir , Nonfiction
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• ISBN-10: 1250866448
• ISBN-13: 9781250866448

StarTribune

Review: 'friends, lovers, and the big terrible thing,' by matthew perry.

Could Matthew Perry be any more vulnerable? In his bestselling memoir, the former "Friends" star shares his battles with addiction in excruciating detail: stealing pills from strangers' homes, emptying endless bottles of vodka and arranging for drug dealers to visit him in treatment centers. It's the part of his 12-step program where he's making amends with his fans.

Perry is less forthcoming about his showbiz adventures. He spends an entire chapter lauding "Whole Ten Yards" co-star Bruce Willis and shares dirt about how he blew a promising romance with Julia Roberts. But he shies away from backstage tales about his work, except for when he's dealing with how he let down his castmates. (He spends a lot of ink apologizing to Jennifer Aniston.)

TV fans would have loved at least more than passing references to his guest appearances on "The West Wing" and his fine performance as Teddy Kennedy in "The Kennedys — After Camelot" miniseries. Perry has written for stage and screen, so he knows how to tell a story. The book, however, leans a little too hard on cliches.

He ends up repeating certain anecdotes, sometimes within a few pages of each other. Those who have struggled with drugs and alcohol, though, will forgive him. If Perry's only goal was to be an inspiration to fellow addicts, he's succeeded.

Neal Justin is the Star Tribune's TV critic.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

By: Matthew Perry.

Publisher: Flatiron Books, 250 pages, $29.99.

Neal Justin covers the entertainment world, primarily TV and radio. He also reviews stand-up comedy. Justin is the founder of JCamp, a non-profit program for high-school journalists, and works on many fronts to further diversity in newsrooms.

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Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry review – being Chandler Bing

The sitcom star’s fascinating, gruesome tale of addiction and how he kept the show on the road

When Matthew Perry was taking his first steps as an actor, his father bought him a book called Acting With Style. John Bennett Perry, a singer and performer best known for appearing in Old Spice adverts in the 1970s and 80s, wrote in the inside page: “Another generation shot to hell. Love, Dad.” Little did he know how accurate his inscription would turn out to be. Professionally, his son would easily outshine him, landing the part of Chandler Bing in Friends, the biggest sitcom in TV history. But, in life, it was Matthew who came off worse, a result of his catastrophic addictions to alcohol and opiates.

By turns fascinating and maddening, Perry’s memoir is less a tale of a glittering showbiz career than a fitfully gruesome account of his efforts to keep the show on the road. He reckons to have attended 6,000 AA meetings, detoxed 65 times, and spent in the region of $7m to get sober. His book begins, as so many addiction memoirs do, with him at his lowest ebb. Hospitalised after an “explosion” of the bowel, a result of chronic constipation caused by opiate abuse, he had arrived at the emergency room screaming in pain and then fallen into a coma which lasted for 14 days. “It’s kind of poetic,” he notes. “I was so full of shit it nearly killed me.”

The drily funny tone is typical of Perry, who read the early Friends scripts and saw a kindred spirit in the smart, withering Chandler. Realising in his teens he could use humour to get people’s attention, he turned being funny into an Olympic sport. With two school friends he developed a sarcastic way of talking – example: “Could the teacher be any meaner?” – which would later become his character’s signature.

His problems started well before he became a household name. A child of divorced parents, he had long felt like an outsider in his own family. From the age of five, he would travel alone by plane from Montreal to visit his father in Los Angeles wearing a sign that read “Unaccompanied minor”. At 14, he was delighted to discover that drinking quelled the negative thoughts and made him more charming too. Later on, a painkiller prescription brought fresh serenity and soon he was knocking back 55 pills a day.

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Perry’s addictive personality was also evident in his relentless quest for fame, which he believed would solve his problems: “I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realise they are the wrong dreams,” he writes. The actor makes no bones about his atrocious behaviour, delivering scattergun apologies to family, colleagues and ex-girlfriends including Julia Roberts, whom he dumped purely out of fear that she would dump him first.

But if the many hospital visits, detox programmes and breakups have been chastening, the massive show-off in Perry hasn’t been entirely vanquished. He blithely refers to himself as one of the funniest guys on the planet, gets antsy about reviews and can’t stop talking about how rich he is (buying property seems to be another addiction). Elsewhere, he misjudges the mood with a gag in which he asks why “original thinkers” such as River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die while Keanu Reeves is still alive, and makes a tone-deaf pronouncement about a friend who “never made it as an actor, has diabetes, is constantly worried about money, doesn’t work. I would trade places with him in a second.”

It would be nice to report that Perry turned his life around and engineered a happy ending for his offscreen self. In fact, the most desolate moments come when he evaluates his life now, aged 53, “sitting in a huge house, overlooking the ocean, with no one to share it with, save a sober companion, a nurse, and a gardener twice a week”. Perry can undoubtedly be a pain in the backside but in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing he wears his big, bruised heart on his sleeve. The overwhelming sense is of a lonely, disappointed man in desperate need of a hug.

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From chandler’s cadence to addiction woes: 8 revelations from matthew perry’s memoir.

The actor's new book, 'Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,' details his addiction issues and lets readers in on never-before-told stories from his long career.

By Seija Rankin

Seija Rankin

Senior Editor

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In Matthew Perry ‘s new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing , the author and actor spends most of the 250 pages discussing the Big Terrible Thing. For the very first time, he chronicles his addiction in great detail; Perry’s struggles with alcohol and painkillers have been known to the public for decades, but the book lays bare just how close to the edge he came — and how often.

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But Perry also dedicates time in the book to reflecting on his high-profile acting career. It isn’t a Hollywood tell-all in the traditional sense (most of the telling is used up with his stories about continually coming back from the brink), but offers very specific trivia that even the most die-hard of Friends fan wouldn’t know. Here are a few key revelations from Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing .

He was supposed to be in Don’t Look Up

While the Netflix climate-apocalypse satire was in development, Perry took a meeting with one Adam McKay, which resulted in the offer of a role. He was to play a Republican journalist, in a small role that called for several scenes opposite Meryl Streep (who played a comically narcissistic U.S. president). Perry was supposed to be heading to another rehab stint — this time in Switzerland, much farther afield than his past stays — and had recently broken eight ribs while getting CPR. He was on 1,800 milligrams of hydrocodone, but flew to Boston to film. He worked on a group scene with Jonah Hill that never made it onscreen, and had to leave the set before working with Streep because of his injuries. “It was heartbreaking,” he writes. “But I was in too much pain.”

Chandler’s speech style started in the audition

Courteney cox set the collegial tone on the friends set.

When the sitcom started filming, Cox was easily the most famous of the group, thanks to her roles in Ace Ventura and Family Ties . But on the day that the six co-stars gathered for the first time on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, Cox said over lunch: “There are no stars here. This is an ensemble show. We’re all supposed to be friends.” As Perry explains, she’d seen a similar dynamic play out during a guest spot on Seinfeld — something he credits for kicking off the group’s eventual inseparability.

Perry’s courtship with Julia Roberts started with a fax about quantum physics

In season two, NBC was planning a big post-Super Bowl episode of Friends , and Julia Roberts agreed to guest-star — if she could be part of Chandler’s storyline. Marta Kauffman relayed this to Perry, along with a suggestion that he send her flowers. He did, along with a card that read, “The only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.” She replied, via fax, that she would only agree to the show if he “adequately explained quantum physics to her.” And thus, their fax flirtation was born. (He found a paper about wave-partical duality and the uncertainty principle to pass her way.)

Friends almost broke the fourth wall in season eight

David schwimmer suggested a group contract negotiation.

Friends made a lot of headlines going into its final season for their collective million-dollar-per-episode paydays. But, according to the memoir, the on-set collective bargaining started thanks to a suggestion from Schwimmer back in season one. Perry writes that the actor, who played Ross on Friends — and was the breakout star of the show in those early episodes (he was also the first to shoot a commercial, get his own movie, and buy his own house) — came into Perry’s dressing room and suggested they renegotiate their contracts as a team, and insist they all get paid the same amount. “It was a decision that proved to be extremely lucrative down the line,” Perry says. “David had certainly been in a position to go for the most money, and he didn’t. … It gave us a tremendous amount of power. By season eight, we were making a million dollars per episode; by season 10, we were making even more.”

Perry never filmed Friends while high

Season nine of friends was the only one during which perry was completely sober.

The actor shot the season seven finale, which featured Chandler and Monica’s wedding, while living at a Malibu rehab facility. By the summer after season eight, he had gotten clean again, and Perry says he stayed that way for the entirety of season nine, which he describes as his most successful on the show — it was also the only season for which he got nominated for a best actor Emmy. “What did I do differently that season? I listened. I didn’t just stand there and wait my turn to speak,” he writes. (While recently promoting his book, Perry told The New York Times he had been clean for 18 months, which means he was newly drug- and alcohol-free when the Friends reunion aired in May 2021 . “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he estimated.)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Matthew Perry (@mattyperry4)

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The biggest revelations from Matthew Perry's memoir, published one year before his death

Update: On Oct. 28, 2023, it was confirmed that Matthew Perry died at age 54 after an apparent drowning . In November 2022, the actor — known for his role as Chandler Bing in "Friends" — published his memoir, entitled "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.” TODAY.com unpacked the details found within its pages after the book's publication. Read the original post as it first ran below.

Matthew Perry is letting it all out.

In his new memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” out Nov. 1, the actor gets candid about some of the moments that have shaped his career and personal life, including his battle with addiction and living under the spotlight. 

Perry spent years making the world laugh through his role on “ Friends” as Chandler Bing — but, as the memoir shows, he was struggling behind the scenes.

After decades of managing the highs and lows of his career while living with the “big terrible thing” he calls addiction, Perry is publicly reflecting back on his life.

Here are some major revelations Perry shares in the tell-all, from romantic relationships (and almost relationships) with fellow celebrities to behind-the-scenes memories from "Friends."

He was in a coma after his colon erupted

The actor opens up his book by recalling his near death experience in 2019 after his colon burst as a result of opioid overuse. 

At the hospital, Perry underwent emergency surgery for seven hours. His family was told he had a two percent chance of making it through the night. “I will have to live out the rest of my days knowing that my mother and others heard those words,” Perry writes.

Although Perry survived the night, the actor reveals he landed in a two week-long coma, followed by a five month hospitalization. He had to use a colostomy bag for nine months. 

“I had realized that my greatest fear had come true, which is that I did this to myself,” Perry said. 

Since then, Perry said he has undergone 14 more surgeries.  

He has spent upward $7 million trying to get sober

Perry says his journey with addiction has been both arduous and costly. According to the actor's memoir, he has spent upward $7 million trying to get sober and has been to rehab 15 times (in an interview with the New York Times , Perry said the number was more like $9 million).

“I’ve been in a mental institution, gone to therapy twice a week for thirty years, been to death’s door,” Perry writes. 

This does not include the money and time he has spent as a result of his actions while battling alcohol and drug abuse. The actor recalls consuming drugs and a quart of vodka a day on the set of "Serving Sara," a 2002 film.

“Every day I would show up to set, pass out in my chair, wake up to do a scene, stumble to set, then just basically scream into a camera for two minutes,” Perry writes. 

Eventually, Perry went away for rehab which later meant paying $650,000 for temporarily shutting down production and re-recording most of his lines in the movie. "Small price to save my life," he writes.

“I needed to make real amends … so I recorded my slurred parts for the entire movie, which meant I looped the entire movie,” Perry writes. “Then I committed to doing the most press possible in the history of press, bending over backward to make things right.”

He almost didn’t play Chandler on 'Friends'

Could picturing a world where Chandler was not played by Matthew Perry, be any more impossible? Well, the actor reveals this was almost the case.

At the time when auditions for “Friends,” originally titled “Friends Like Us,” were happening, Matthew Perry was under contract with another show called “L.A.X 2194.”

“I was devastated,” Perry writes. “When I read the script for “Friends Like Us” it was as if someone had followed me around for a year … I was Chandler.”

Eventually, after “L.A.X. 2194” wasn’t picked up for a season, Perry was allowed to audition. 

And as we know, the rest is history.

He and ex-girlfriend Julia Roberts flirted over fax

Perry had a short-lived and very public romance with Julia Roberts in 1995. “She was the biggest movie star in the world, and I was on the number one show on TV," he said.

"Friends" co-creator Marta Kauffman initially asked Perry to reach out in an attempt to convince Roberts to appear on the show's post Super Bowl episode. The two then began corresponding over fax.

“Three or four times a day I would sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly revealing her next missive,” Perry writes. “It was like she was placed on this planet to make the world smile, and now, in particular, me.”

Roberts agreed to be on the episode. Despite their on and off air chemistry, the romance came to an end after Perry called it quits.

“I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable,” Perry writes. “So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”

He watched Roberts win an Oscar for her role in “Erin Brockovich” from his room at rehab.

“I was incredibly happy for her,” he writes. “As for me, I was just grateful to have made it one more day.”

He crushed on co-star Valerie Bertinelli and other A-listers

In 1990, four years before "Friends" premiered, Perry starred on a CBS sitcom called "Sydney" with Valerie Bertinelli. Perry, then 19, had a crush on Bertinelli, then 30, who was married to Eddie Van Halen at the time.

“I was completely captivated,” Perry writes. “I mean, I was obsessed with her and harbored elaborate fantasies about her leaving Eddie Van Halen and living out the rest of her days with me.”

And one day, his dreams (almost) came true. Perry says he and Bertinelli had a "long, elaborate make-out session" while her husband, Eddie Van Halen, was passed out just feet away from them. 

The next day at work, Perry said Bertinelli was business as usual, not acknowledging the prior night's antics.

“I quickly got the hint and also played the role I was supposed to, but inside I was devastated,” he said, adding that Bertinelli had “done nothing wrong.”

Bertinelli was not Perry's only celebrity make-out at the time. Perry also says he kissed a young and still fairly unknown Gwyneth Paltrow in a broom cupboard while in Williamstown, Mass. 

He asked “Friends” co-star Jennifer Aniston out three years before they crossed paths again on the sitcom. Aniston declined but ironically asked to remain friends. 

“Fortunately, even though I was still attracted to her and thought she was so great, that first day we were able to sail right past the past and focus on the fact that we had both gotten the best job Hollywood had to offer,” Perry writes.

He was living in rehab when Monica and Chandler got married on 'Friends'

In the book, Perry says Season Nine of the show was the only season of "Friends" he filmed while fully sober (he mentions that he received his only Emmy nomination for that season).

Perry says he thought he was keeping his addiction a secret from his cast-mates until Aniston came to his dressing room one day and told him everyone could smell alcohol on him.

Perry eventually had a sober companion with him on set, then left to live in a detox center .

“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,” Perry writes.

He struggled after 'Friends' came to an end

Perry said that when “Friends” came to an end, he "felt nothing ."

"I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside," Perry writes. 

He recalls waking up the morning after the finale was filmed, thinking about what he was going to do next. 

“With no ridiculously high paying, dream-come-true kind of job to go to, and no special someone in my life, things slipped fast,” Perry writes. “In fact, it was like falling off a cliff.”

Things looked promising for him for a while until he agreed to film a sequel for the box office smash “The Whole Nine Yards,” titled “The Whole Ten Yards.” 

Unlike the 2000 classic, the sequel bombed at the box office. 

“That was the moment Hollywood decided to no longer invite Mr. Perry to be in movies,” Perry writes. 

This led to Perry seeking more dramatic roles, and was eventually offered the lead in “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” While the show initially did well, it was ultimately canceled after one season.

Despite this setback, Perry began working on writing his own projects. “Mr. Sunshine” premiered in 2011, but was canceled after one season. This was followed by “Go On,” which was also quickly canceled. 

“I wasn’t devastated by the lack of success — as I said, I knew a hit TV show couldn’t fill my soul,” he writes.

He was meant to star alongside Meryl Streep in 'Don’t Look Up'

Perry’s opportunity to star in more serious dramatic roles, appeared in 2020 when director Adam McKay approached him about a role in Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up.” He was to play a journalist and have three scenes alongside Meryl Streep.

“This would be the biggest movie I’d gotten ever,” Perry writes. 

However, around this time, Perry had been at a rehab facility in Switzerland, where doctors planned to surgically insert a medical device in his back to help with his stomach pain from previous surgeries. He was given propofol during the surgery, which Perry said stopped his heart for five minutes. 

They proceeded to conduct CPR on Perry, during which eight of his ribs were broken. The pain of this injury caused him to drop out of the film. 

“Being in 'Don’t Look Up' didn’t work out because my life was on fire, but I learned an important lesson: I was hirable in something big without putting on a show,” Perry writes. 

Cameron Diaz once accidentally punched him

Perry reveals he once got set up on a date with Cameron Diaz following her split from Justin Timberlake. 

During the dinner party, Perry writes that "it was clear Diaz was interested in (him) at all," after she "got almost instantly stoned."

The night led to the group playing a game of Pictionary. After saying something witty to Diaz, she went to punch him in the shoulder but accidentally landed the punch on his face. 

He is learning how to overcome 'the big terrible thing'

Perry says that his therapist helped him quit drugs by telling him to associate them with the possibility of having to wear a colostomy bag "for the rest of (his) life." 

“I have not been interested in taking a drug since,” he writes, later adding, "I've surrendered, but to the winning side, not the losing. I'm not longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol. I no longer feel the need to automatically light up a cigarette to go with my morning coffee."

Perry ends the book thanking his friends and family, and naming the "one thing (he) got right."

"I never gave up, I never raised my hands and said, ‘That’s enough, I can’t take it anymore, you win,” Perry writes. “And because of that, I stand tall now, ready for what comes next.”

Read more about Matthew Perry

• Matthew Perry apologizes for line in memoir about Keanu Reeves
• Here's why Matthew Perry doesn't think his 'Friends' costars will read his memoir
• Matthew Perry recalls 'scary' confrontation with Jennifer Aniston: 'She was the one'

Anahy Diaz is a Platforms NBC Page at  TODAY.com , where she contributes to the management of newsletters and main cover stories. Anahy is a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso with a B.A. in Multimedia Journalism.

Matthew Perry’s Most Shocking Memoir Reveals: Salary Details, Bashing His Skull Open and One Sober ‘Friends’ Season

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Matthew Perry has been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, but goes much deeper in his new memoir, “ Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, ” which is now available. Not only does the actor recount memories of his time on “Friends” — both sober and not — but he also details the many relapses he’s gone through.

After having his first drink at 14, by 18, Perrry was drinking consistently. After Season 2 of “ Friends ,” Perry traveled to Las Vegas to film “When Fools Rush In”: There, he had a jet ski accident that led to him being prescribed Vicodin, which was the start of his addiction to pills.

At one point, as Perry shares in his book, he was taking 55 Vicodin a day, and had to try various ploys in order to get them. He’d fake migraines or other pain, and sit through MRIs with different doctors. On Sundays, he’d go to open houses and search the medicine cabinets of different homes for any pills he could find.

In 2018, his colon exploded and he was in a coma for two weeks, while his family was told he had a 2% chance to live . He was put on an ECMO machine, along with four others in the hospital; the other four did not survive. He then lived with a colostomy bag for nine months.

Through the years, Perry says he’s attended 6,000 AA meetings, gone to rehab 15 times, been in detox 65 times, has been on life support and has spent between $7-$9 million trying to get sober. He’s had 14 surgeries — his last in January 2022 which left him with a six-inch incision with metal staples.

During COVID, he was at a rehab center in Switzerland and faked pain to get 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin a day and was having daily ketamine infusions. He then had to get surgery while there and was given a shot of propofol. He woke up 11 hours later in a different hospital and was told that the propofol had stopped his heart for five minutes. The long CPR process also broke eight of his ribs and the doctor refused more meds.

When he left Switzerland, he was told he’d still get the 1,800 milligrams at an L.A. hospital. He paid $175,000 to fly in a private jet home and was told no — the doctor informed him that cancer patients are given 100 mgs. So, he booked another $175,000 private flight that same night back to Switzerland.

This was simply one of his near-death experiences Perry recalled in the book, while also opening up about his personal family relationships, friendships, romances and set experiences. Scroll down for more:

The ‘Friends’ Money

Throughout the book, Perry is open about his finances, detailing how much he spent and made at various parts of his life.

He had already booked the “LAX 2194” pilot when he got the offer for “Friends,” but eventually got out of it and was paid $22,500 for that one episode. He went on to make more than $1 million a week on “Friends,” thanks to David Schwimmer.

“It was a decision that proved to be extremely lucrative down the line. David had certainly been in a position to go for the most money, and he didn’t. I would like to think that I would have made the same move, but as a greedy twenty-five-year-old, I’m not sure I would have. But his decision served to make us take care of each other through what turned out to be a myriad of stressful network negotiations, and it gave us a tremendous amount of power,” he wrote. “By season eight, we were making a million dollars per episode; by season ten we were making even more. We were making $1,100,040 an episode, and we were asking to do fewer episodes. Morons, all of us. We had David’s goodness, and his astute business sense, to thank for what we had been offered. I owe you about $30 million, David. (We were still morons.)”

And Even More Money...

He also delves into other financial decisions he’s made in his life: He bought a $20 million apartment “because Bruce Wayne lived in just such an apartment in ‘The Dark Knight,’” he wrote. He was paid $2 million for “Almost Heroes,” Chris Farley’s final movie.

About Farley’s death in 1997, Perry wrote: “His disease had progressed faster than mine had. (Plus, I had a healthy fear of the word “heroin,” a fear we did not share.) I punched a hole through Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall when I found out. I had to promote ‘Almost Heroes’ two weeks after he died; I found myself publicly discussing his death from drugs and alcohol. I was high the entire time.”

He was paid $1 million for “Fools Rush In,” which he filmed between Seasons 2 and 3 of “Friends.”

Later on, he was offered $50,000 an episode for 2006’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” His team got the rate up to $175,000. That same year, Perry wrote, Matt LeBlanc was making $600,000 an episode for “Joey.”

After a successful U.K. run of his play “The End of Longing,” which he wrote and starred in, earned him nearly $600,000, the show moved to New York; he made only $600 for the Off-Broadway run.

In many of the chapters, Perry recalls his fear of abandonment, which resulted in his ending most romantic relationships before the woman would have the chance to leave. That was the case with Julia Roberts , who he began his flirting with via fax before it turned into a full romance.

He also recounted going on a date with Cameron Diaz , who he claimed got “stoned” and accidentally punched him in the face. Plus, the summer before “Friends” premiered, he randomly made out with Gwyneth Paltrow inside a closet in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

During “Fools Rush In,” Perry wrote that Salma Hayek said, “Let’s just spoon a little bit,” in order to bond their characters. He also said her “long-winded ideas” weren’t always helpful.

He wrote a bit about his crush on Valerie Bertinelli , who was married to Eddie Van Halen, claiming that they did have “a long, elaborate make-out session” one night when her husband passed out after enjoying “the fruits of the vine a little too hard.” Then she acted as though it never happened.

What Was Happening on ‘Friends’

The book includes numerous “Friends” secrets, including the fact that when was a kid, Perry actually created the “Chandler speak” that would later become so famous — as a way to make people laugh.

By the second half of the series, he “had to beg the producers” to ditch it, along with the sweater vests. “That particular cadence — could it be more annoying? — had been so played out that if I had to put the emphasis in the wrong place one more time, I thought I’d explode, so I just went back to saying lines normally, for the most part in season six and then beyond,” he wrote.

He wrote that viewers “can track the trajectory” of his addiction from his weight: “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.”

During Season 7, he was living in a sober home, and was driven by the center to and from set each day — including the day he filmed Monica and Chandler’s wedding.

In between Seasons 8 and 9, he went to rehab and the entire world knew — so, at the first table read back, he was the first to crack a joke about it when all eyes were on him. “Kevin Bright, one of the shows executive producers, had opened the proceedings by saying, ‘Anyone want to talk about their summer vacations?’ and I took the opportunity to break the ice, saying rather loudly and soberly, ‘OK! I’ll start!’ thus releasing all the tension in the room.”

Season 9 was the only season he was fully sober for — and was the only time he was nominated for an Emmy for the show. He thanked his co-stars multiple times during the memoir, noting that they held him up at his lowest times. Once, Matt LeBlanc nudged him awake when he’d nodded off before a line. Still, he never missed his mark while filming.

Some of Perry’s “Friends” recollections were more positive: He asked co-creator Marta Kauffman if he could have the last line of the show (which he did). At one point on the series, they considered breaking the metaphorical fourth wall for a scene Perry pitched between him and Sean Penn. It would have taken place during the Halloween episode in which Chandler is dressed as a giant bunny.

“Sean walks by and I say, ‘Sean, can I talk to you for a second?’ ‘Sure, Matthew, what’s up?’ ‘Well, I’ve been really giving this a lot of thought. And I think you’re a good person to talk to about this,’” Perry wrote. “I’m smoking as I say this, and as I put the cigarette out with my huge bunny foot, I say, ‘I’ve been looking to transition myself into dramatic work.’ Sean Penn looks me up and down for about five beats and just says, ‘Good luck.’”

While the take got a great laugh, they decided against breaking the show’s rules for that scene.

Another fun “Friends” tidbit for fans: at one point, wardrobe gave LeBlanc (not Schwimmer!) brown leather pants, which were luckily nixed before filming began.

How Bruce Willis Arrived on ‘Friends’

Perry and Bruce Willis became great friends while filming “The Whole Nine Yards,” but Willis wasn’t sure the movie would be big, while Perry was convinced. They then made a bet — if the movie was a hit, Willis would have to make a guest appearance on “Friends.” See Season 6.

He Once Beat Up Justin Trudeau

When he was 10, as his mom began working for Pierre Trudeau, he “beat up Pierre’s son (an eventual prime minister himself) Justin Trudeau,” Perry wrote. “(I decided to end my argument with him when he was put in charge of an entire army.)”

Bad boy behavior continued, and one teacher told him, “If you don’t change the way you are, you’ll never amount to anything.” He added, “(Should I admit that when I got the cover of ‘People’ magazine I had a copy of it sent to Dr. Webb with a note that read, “I guess you were wrong”? Nah, that would be crass.) I did.”

A Tough Time on ‘Serving Sara’

After Season 5, Perry’s “Friends” cast and crew — first Jennifer Aniston alone, and later, others — approached him and told them they knew what was going on with him. They wanted to help; he wanted out. So, he told his manager he needed to do a movie.

He booked “Serving Sara,” which was filming in Dallas. At the time, he was taking methadone (to help with his Vicodin habit), Xanax, cocaine and drinking a full quart of vodka a day. (He later had to dub all of his lines in voiceover for the movie, because his speech was so slurred.)

Perry went to a detox center, and the movie had to pause — a move he was later sued for, and for which he had to pay $650,000. “Small price to save my life,” he wrote. “Friends” also postponed his scenes at that time.

He Had Fentanyl in His System

After Perry’s colon exploded in 2018 and he had to have a colostomy bag, he was prescribed opiates — which were the reason his colon exploded in the first place. Perry was living at home with a sober companion and a nurse, but was no longer getting high from the amount of drugs he was given. He then turned to a drug dealer to buy Oxy. “The street pills were something like $75 per pill, so I was giving the guy $3,000 at a time, many times a week.”

He was sent to rehab when on 14 milligrams of Ativan and 60 milligrams of OxyContin; his tests also showed there was fentanyl in his system.

One night in treatment, he wandered into a hallway: “I’ll never be able to fully explain what happened next, but all of a sudden, I started slamming my head against the wall, as hard as humanly possible… There was blood everywhere. After about eight of these mind-numbing slams, somebody must have heard me, and stopped me, and asked the only logical question: ‘Why are you doing that?’ I gazed at her, and looking like Rocky Balboa from every one of those last scenes, I said, ‘Because I couldn’t think of anything better.’”

He Got All New Teeth

Shortly before the “Friends” reunion filmed, Perry was feeling great and had even quit smoking after a few sessions of being hypnotized. (At one point, he was smoking 60 cigarettes a day.)

However, he then had a dental emergency.

“I took a bite into a piece of toast with peanut butter smeared on it, and all my top teeth fell out. Yes, all of them. A quick pop to the dentist was in short order — I am, after all, an actor, and should have all my teeth in my mouth, not in a Baggie in the pocket of my jeans,” he wrote. “But disaster struck and major work was needed. The dentist had to remove every single one of my teeth — including the implants that were nailed into my jaw — and then replace them all with new ones.”

During ABC’s Oct. 28 “Nightline” interview with Perry, he revealed that the surgery is the reason his speech is slurred on the reunion, as the operation took place days before the HBO Max special filmed.

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Understanding the Police Probe Into Matthew Perry's Death

L os Angeles Police and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are investigating the source of the ketamine that led to Matthew Perry’s death , authorities said on Tuesday.

Perry, a household name best known for his decade-long portrayal of Chandler Bing in comedy series Friends , was discovered unresponsive in the “ heated end of a swimming pool ” in his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28. 

A post-mortem found that the 54-year-old actor’s cause of death was the accidental result of "the acute effects of ketamine". Drowning was cited as a secondary factor , and there were no signs of fatal trauma or foul play. 

Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties , has both recreational uses and medicinal uses; it is occasionally used for the treatment of depression and other mental health conditions. 

TIME has reached out to the LAPD and DEA for comment and further information.

Read More: Matthew Perry Is Mourned by His Friends Castmates in Moving Tributes

An autopsy report by the Los Angeles County Coroner determined that Perry—who had openly struggled with drug and alcohol addiction—was reportedly undergoing ketamine infusion therapy, an experimental treatment for depression. Perry had been "reportedly clean for 19 months” according to PEOPLE , which obtained a copy of the autopsy report.

It also found that the level of ketamine present in Perry’s blood amounted to that used during general anesthesia. The medical examiner noted that Perry’s last treatment took place a week and a half before his death and could not account for this volume.

Perry outlined his struggles with addiction in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was published on Nov. 1, 2022, almost a year before his death.  

In an interview with podcast host Tom Power to promote the book, Perry said he would rather be remembered for helping others trying to get sober. 

“The best thing about me, bar none, is that if somebody comes to me and says, ‘I can’t stop drinking, can you help me?’ I can say ‘yes’ and follow up and do it,” he said. “When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned. I want that to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m gonna live the rest of my life proving that.”

Write to Armani Syed at [email protected] .

Matthew Perry’s fatal ketamine use under criminal investigation by LAPD, DEA

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Matthew Perry’s death from acute effects of the prescription drug ketamine is the source of a criminal investigation, with authorities examining where the actor got the medication, LAPD officials told The Times.

Perry was found dead Oct. 28 in the hot tub of his swimming pool at his Pacific Palisades home. Trace amounts of ketamine — which is sometimes used to treat depression — were found in Perry’s stomach, according to the Los Angeles County medical examiner. But the level found in his blood was about the same quantity as would be used during general anesthesia, his autopsy showed.

How Perry came to have so much ketamine is now the subject of a probe by the Los Angeles Police Department with the assistance of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Service, Robbery-Homicide Division Capt. Scot Williams told The Times on Tuesday. TMZ first reported the investigation.

The ketamine in Perry’s system caused cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression, the medical examiner reported. Other contributing factors in the actor’s death included drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, a medication used to treat opioid-use disorder.

The actor was best known for playing the sarcastic and witty Chandler Bing on NBC’s “Friends” for 10 seasons, from 1994 to 2004. In his 2022 memoir, Perry said he began abusing substances at the age of 14 and landed the role on “Friends” a decade later. Fame increased his dependency on alcohol and drugs. At one point, he said in his book, he took nearly five dozen pills a day.

According to the medical examiner, Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy every other day for a period of time but had reduced that intake, and his last known infusion was a week and a half before his death.

Full coverage: Matthew Perry dead at 54

Matthew Perry was found dead at his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28. ‘Friends’ stars and others shared tributes to the actor.

Oct. 30, 2023

The medical examiner said the ketamine found in Perry’s system at the time of his death could not have been from that earlier infusion as it typically disappears in detectable amounts in three to four hours after intake.

According to his autopsy report, Perry had been playing pickleball about 11 that morning, and his live-in assistant last saw him at 1:37 p.m.

Upon returning to Perry’s home on Blue Sail Drive, the assistant found him floating face-down. The assistant jumped in, pulled Perry’s head out of the water and called 911.

Paramedics arrived and moved Perry onto the grass, where he was pronounced dead.

Appreciation: Matthew Perry was easy to love. And it went deeper than his acting

The ‘Friends’ actor, who died Saturday at 54, was a ninja of sarcasm — and his peerless blend of resilience and vulnerability made him a star we could all root for.

Oct. 29, 2023

A legal medication commonly used as an anesthetic, ketamine has been increasingly offered “off label” at private clinics to treat depression and other mental health disorders, according to Dr. David Goodman-Meza, an addiction-medicine and infectious-disease specialist at UCLA.

Some people also snort or inject it recreationally to experience euphoric or “dissociative” effects that cause someone to feel separated from their own body, Goodman-Meza told The Times in December . At very high doses, it can make people feel immobilized and spur hallucinations, an experience called a “K-hole.”

The drug can complicate breathing and increase demands on the heart. If someone already has coronary artery disease and is taking high doses of ketamine, “that could then speed up your heart, create more demand, but then your arteries don’t have the ability to supply that demand,” the physician explained.

Inside the investigation that will determine how Matthew Perry died

Experts say determining the actor’s cause of death will take time and include a team of physicians and investigators working out of the L.A. County coroner’s office.

Nov. 3, 2023

The autopsy report noted that Perry had no other drugs in his system and had been 19 months sober at the time of his death. There was no evidence of illicit drugs or paraphernalia at his home.

The medical examiner also noted that Perry, 54, had diabetes and suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems. He at one time had a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

A coroner’s investigator interviewed a person close to Perry who described him as in “good spirits” and said he had quit smoking two weeks prior to his death and was weaning himself off ketamine.

In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that an intravenous dose of ketamine had rapid antidepressant effects. About 300 clinical trials have been held, and they have broadly found that ketamine is extremely fast-acting compared with traditional antidepressants and can relieve depression for a period that can last days or weeks.

Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.

More to Read

Who supplied Matthew Perry ketamine? Investigation aims to find out

Paramedic who injected Elijah McClain with ketamine before his death avoids prison

April 27, 2024

Matthew Perry was ‘happy,’ stepfather says as star’s will goes public

March 13, 2024

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Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. Known as @lacrimes on Twitter, during almost 30 years at The Times he also has been part of the breaking news staff that won Pulitzers in 1998, 2004 and 2016.

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Courteney Cox says Matthew Perry visits her a lot: 'I sense Matthew's around, for sure'

Perry died Oct. 28, 2023 from a ketamine overdose at age 54.

Lester Fabian Brathwaite is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly , where he covers breaking news, all things Real Housewives , and a rich cornucopia of popular culture. Formerly a senior editor at Out magazine, his work has appeared on NewNowNext , Queerty , Rolling Stone , and The New Yorker . He was also the first author signed to Phoebe Robinson's Tiny Reparations imprint. He met Oprah once.

Courteney Cox recently discussed her spirituality and revealed she still talks to people in her life who have died, including Friends costar Matthew Perry .

In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning , Cox called Perry "probably one of the funniest human beings in the world" and recalled how he visits her "a lot."

Everett Collection

"You know, he's just so funny. He is genuinely a huge heart, obviously struggled," Cox said of the late actor. "I'm so thankful I got to work so closely with him for so many years. He visits me a lot, if we believe in that."

Elaborating on her spirituality, Cox added, "You know, I talk to my mom, my dad, Matthew — I feel like there are a lotta people that are, I think, that guide us. I do sense, yeah, I sense Matthew's around, for sure."

Sign up for  Entertainment Weekly's  free daily newsletter  to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Perry, who was very public with his struggles with addiction, died Oct. 28 of last year due to "acute effects of ketamine." In a joint statement , Cox and his other Friends costars eulogized Perry.

“We are all so utterly devastated by the loss of Matthew," the statement read. “We were more than just cast mates. We are a family. There is so much to say, but right now we're going to take a moment to grieve and process this unfathomable loss."

In a separate tribute , Cox shared a Friends outtake from a scene between her and Perry, celebrating how "funny" and "kind" he was. "I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day," she wrote.

Earlier this month, the classic sitcom commemorated the 20th anniversary of the series finale.

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Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Paperback – June 25, 2024

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER The BELOVED STAR OF FRIENDS takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this “CANDID, DARKLY FUNNY...POIGNANT” memoir ( The New York Times ) A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK by Time , Associated Press, Goodreads, USA Today , and more! “Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty.” So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who traveled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us . . . and so much more. In an extraordinary story that only he could tell―and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it―Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he’s found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends , sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it despite seemingly having it all. Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening―as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.

• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Flatiron Books
• Publication date June 25, 2024
• Dimensions 5.38 x 0.69 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1250866456
• ISBN-13 978-1250866455
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" R emarkable, startling, and heartfelt ...The bravery of Perry’s book is not just in what he says, or how he says it, and how unflinching he is in his commitment to say it, but that he chose to say it at all." ― GQ “ Candid, darkly funny …starkly chronicling his decades-long cage match with drinking and drug use. Perry writes gratefully and glowingly… fans will find poignant nuggets in its pages .” ― The New York Times “A heartbreakingly beautiful memoir.” ― People " Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is a raw, unflinching memoir that took courage to write. As it turns out, Matthew Perry has a lot of courage. He takes us through his addiction, his illness and his paralyzing loneliness. Somehow, during the course of his life, Matthew was able to turn his pain into comedic joy for others, but, he tells us, it was at a cost. Matthew takes us through his “hell” but doesn’t wallow. Ultimately, this book is filled with hope for the future. If you want to know about who Matthew Perry is, stay away from the rags and read this. " ―Marta Kauffman, co-creator of the NBC sitcom Friends

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Flatiron Books (June 25, 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250866456
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250866455
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.38 x 0.69 x 8.25 inches
• #97 in Television Performer Biographies
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Why Matthew Perry's sudden death is still reportedly under investigation 7 months later

The friends actor died aged 54 from acute effects of ketamine in october.

Matthew Perry's sudden death last fall isn't necessarily an open-and-shut case.

Though the Friends alum –– who was found dead in the pool of his home on October 28 aged 54 –– was already determined to have died from acute effects of ketamine after an autopsy report, and his cause of death isn't under investigation, what led to it is.

ABC News and the New York Post both report that seven months after his tragic passing, an investigation remains ongoing into how and from who the Chandler Bing actor acquired the drugs in the first place.

Per ABC , authorities are interviewing and on the hunt for sources that can help narrow down whoever is behind the distribution and selling of the ketamine that killed Perry, however no arrests have been made yet.

The outlet further states that per the autopsy report released in December, though Perry was believed to have been receiving ketamine infusions for depression and anxiety, the medical examiner ruled that the ketamine found in his system after his death could not have been from some infusion therapy, because ketamine's half life is three to four hours, or less.

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Prior to his death, Perry had spoken candidly about his struggles with addiction, including during his ten-year tenure on Friends , from 1994 to 2004.

Though he did not have children –– he is survived by his mom Suzanne Morrison , his father John Perry , his stepdad Keith Morrison , and five siblings –– he had previously shared that he hoped to be remembered for his work aiding others struggling with addiction , which he largely did through the Perry House, a men's sober living facility.

MORE: Matthew Perry's emotional final birthday gift to lifelong friend Lauren Graham revealed

MORE:  Matthew Perry's stepfather Keith Morrison makes heartbreaking revelation about Friends star's final days

Following Perry's passing, Michael J. Fox , who the comedian had claimed was an inspiration behind him pursuing an acting career, was among the many stars who reflected on his legacy, and he revealed his impactful help when he launched his own foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation two years after he revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's seven years prior.

Speaking with Entertainment Tonight back in November, the Back to the Future actor shared: "I hope this isn't indiscreet, but when [the Friends cast] first made their big sale [on their contracts] and were made millionaires for the rest of their lives, he wrote a big fat check to the foundation."

MORE:  Inside Rihanna's $25m 'mansion in the sky' for sale previously owned by Matthew Perry

In 2002, six years into Friends and two years after Fox created his foundation, the five Friends stars all negotiated a record-breaking deal with NBC, who agreed to pay them $1 million per episode, after they threatened to quit the show should they not be paid equally.

Fox continued: "We were really early on and trying to find our feet. And it was such a vote of confidence," adding: "And it wasn't accompanied by any self-aggrandizing or anything, he was just like, 'Take it and do your best.'"

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LA Authorities Launch Criminal Investigation Into Matthew Perry’s Death

By Chris Murphy

According to The Hollywood Reporter , the Los Angeles Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration have launched a joint criminal investigation into Matthew Perry’s tragic death at the age of 54.

On October 28, 2023, the Friends star was pronounced dead after he was found unresponsive and floating face down in a hot tub at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. An autopsy found that Perry’s death was caused principally by the “acute effects of ketamine,” a drug that can be used to treat depression and anxiety. “At the high levels of ketamine found in his postmortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” read the coroner’s report, which was obtained by THR.

Prior to his death, Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy. His last session took place a week and a half before his death, but as the medical examiner who performed his autopsy pointed out, the ketamine in his system at the time of his death could not have come from that session. Now the LAPD and DEA are investigating how Perry had so much ketamine in his system on the day of his death.

Other factors also contributed to Perry’s death, including drowning, coronary artery disease, and the effects of the drug buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid use disorder. At the time, Perry’s death was ruled an accident, with no evidence of foul play.

For years, Perry struggled with drug and alcohol use. In his best-selling memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, released in 2022, Perry documented this struggle , revealing that his disease led him to 15 rehab stays, 65 detox stints, and 14 surgeries due to opioid abuse. “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he told The New York Times .

In his memoir, Perry elucidated how ketamine made him feel: He likened taking the dissociative anesthetic to being “hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” but said that the hangover “outweighed the shovel.”

“I often thought that I was dying during that hour,” Perry wrote of ketamine therapy. “Oh, I thought, this is what happens when you die. Yet I would continually sign up for this shit because it was something different, and anything different is good.”

Courteney Cox, Perry’s Friends costar, shared on CBS Sunday Morning that she still feels connected to Perry spiritually. “I feel like there are a lot of people that, I think, guide us,” she said. “I do sense—I sense Matthew’s around, for sure.”

After his death, Perry’s loved ones launched the Matthew Perry Foundation , which aims to help people battling drug and alcohol addiction. “The Matthew Perry Foundation is the realization of Matthew’s enduring commitment to helping others struggling with the disease of addiction,” reads the organization’s website. “We are guided by his words and experiences and inspired by his passion for making a difference in as many lives as possible.”

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Matthew Perry's Death Now Under Investigation by DEA and LAPD

It's been confirmed by the LAPD that there's an ongoing criminal investigation into the passing of Friends star Matthew Perry.

Authorities are looking into the death of actor Matthew Perry. Following the Friends star's passing in October 2023, it's now been confirmed that a criminal investigation has been launched into how Perry died.

Per TMZ , the LAPD has begun a criminal investigation looking into the actor's death , and the DEA has also gotten involved . The investigation is said to have been in the process for months, and various "key people in Hollywood" have been interviewed , but it's not clear how much progress has been made by investigators. Reportedly, authorities have spoken to people who are known to have a history of drug use, and that could lead to determining the source of the ketamine. No suspects have been named, and no arrests have been made at this time.

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When Perry died, it was later determined that the "acute effects of ketamine" had contributed to his death. The criminal investigation is meant to uncover where Perry acquired the ketamine and why so much was in his system. Perry had gone through ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety before his passing . However, the ketamine in his system couldn't have been from his last treatment, which was more than a week before his death. Ketamine passes out of a user's system within a matter of hours.

Police Are Looking to Find Out Who Supplied the Ketamine

Naturally, this would suggest that Perry may have obtained the ketamine that contributed to his death illegally. Police are likely looking to identify the person or persons who supplied the actor with the drug to then bring them up on charges. This would be similar to other high-profile cases involving celebrities who'd died from drug use. Rapper Mac Miller's 2018 fentanyl overdose led to the arrests of three men after an investigation, and while one case is still pending, one of the perps was sentenced to over 17 years in prison, while the other was given an 11-year sentence.

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Perry was open about his struggles with addiction in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing . He'd estimated that his addictions had cost him around $9 million, which includes over a dozen stomach surgiers and 15 stays in rehab. On Oct. 28, 2023, Perry was found deceased in a hot tub, and it was initially unclear as to how the actor died. His cause of death was later determined to be from a combination of the acute effects of ketamine, coronary artery disease, and drowning.

Source: Variety

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