DISGRACELAND - Matthew Perry: The One Where He Dies

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Friends star Matthew Perry battled addiction through the white-hot glare of fame while having the number one show on television and the number one movie in theaters at the same time while dating the biggest movie star on the planet. He was a celebrity who experienced unimaginable popularity and crushing loneliness, a dichotomy that drove his addiction, an addiction that caused him to suffer through a coma, various stints in rehab, nine surgeries, broken teeth, broken ribs, and ultimately forced him to succumb to predatory drug dealers and crooked doctors, but not before finding real purpose in this life and helping millions of other addicts fight their own addictions. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.There's more about Matthew Perry coming to your feed on Thursday in the After Party bonus episode. We want to know: What is the greatest television show of all time? Let us know and join the party at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod.Purchase Tickets for Disgraceland's Special Live Stream Event on Oct. 9, 2024:https://www.moment.co/disgraceland/disgraceland-we-are-not-alone-music-wont-save-us-but-tom-delonge-mightTo listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch!Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history,

including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

This is a story about Matthew Perry. one of the most beloved television actors of all time from one of the most celebrated television shows of all time, friends. But this is also a story about addiction and purpose. About million-dollar paydays every week and about $9 million spent on fighting in addiction. It's about comas and colostomy bags

and beautiful movie stars and fax machines, crooked doctors and ketamine queens. It's a story about a man. who loved the spotlight, like a singer loves a great song or great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my Melotron called Unskinny Tata, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to I'll make love to you by Boys to Men. And why would I play you that specific slice of number one? cheese, could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on September 22, 1994. And that was the day that Friends aired on national television, changing Matthew Perry's life forever. On this episode, Addiction, Purpose, Fame, Fax Machines, A Ketamine Queen, and Matthew Perry. I'm Jake Brennan, and this... is disgrace land. There is a weight to silence. It's heavy. Children in the house

means silence is hard to come by. And most parents will tell you that despite the aggravation, that lack of silence gives them purpose. Someone once said that being a parent with multiple small children is like living amongst endless brush fires

constantly springing to life. It's a game of whackamol. One fire bursts a light, you put it out. and before you know it, another one springs up. Your job is to not let them get out of control, and conversely to cultivate them when needed. But without that energy, there is only silence.

And if you've got a longing in your heart or an aversion to confronting parts of you that you'd rather not acknowledge the nasty bits, your insecurities, the silence blocks out all logical thought. It sits on you. It's so heavy you can feel your chest start to cave. For Matthew Perry, the silence squeezed him tight until the pressure exploded into a million fragmented intrusive thoughts,

thoughts that then reconstituted back into a massive and amorphous fear, fear that hit hardest at night, just before the hard to obtain sleep, right during the edge of consciousness, just as Matthew was about to drift off. His fear would pierce the silence and speak to him, sometimes, literally, and sometimes it spoke to him figuratively. The sound of coyotes, tearing apart their prey in the distant Hollywood hills,

made it inevitable that Matthew Perry wouldn't fall asleep any time soon. He'd do anything to end this horrific sound, but then what? It's just more silence. And the silence for him was even scarier. Matthew thought about the Vicodin on his nightstand, and then he thought about the vodka in his freezer. Then, in a manner of speaking, currently influencing the way America spoke, Matthew Perry heard the voice of the character he brought to life on television weekly for millions of people, Chandler Bing. Chandler could always say what Matthew couldn't.

And Matthew smiled in relief when he heard Chandler break through the fear in his head, with that trademark cadence and whipsmart wit to say. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why they invented drugs and alcohol. All your friends smoke. Newports. It's a drag. The menthol smell is gross. You need twin blasts of bonaca and glade that you keep in your glove box before walking into your kitchen. Otherwise, your parents will catch wind and an argument over the friends you're stuck hanging out with will prevent you. from watching the friends you want to hang out with. Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Rachel, Ross, and Chandler on television.

It's Thursday night, 1996, a school night, 8 p.m. You had to be home by now anyway. Otherwise, it wasn't just an argument over your friends. It was an argument over your car privileges. But you don't mind. Friends is your favorite show. It's much better than Seinfeld, or so you think. What's with that dude's style anyway?

Tight jeans and turtlenecks? Nah, you prefer friends. Life at Central Perk seems lighter than life at Monk's Cafe. Plus, Joey and Chandler and Ross are hot, and Rachel and Monica and Phoebe always look perfect. Your mom even cut her hair like Monica's, but you and nearly everyone else you know with any sense of style cut your hair like Rachel's.

Your dad didn't catch the reference. He doesn't care for the show. Or so he says. He just sits in his lazy boy reading the nightly edition of the local newspaper while you and your mom watch, though occasionally you'll hear your dad grunt and approval. Whenever Joey lays out his signature, how you doing? Ross is about to mess up, big time. He's way too jealous of Rachel's co-worker at Bloomingdale's. Bloomingdale's.

God, a job like that at the mall. Can you imagine? To die for. You're stuck working at TCBY, serving the so-called country's best yogurt to health-conscious housewives and bored stoners from your school. Stoners love frozen yogurt, but you hate it. Mainly because serving it only pays five bucks an hour, which is likely close to what Phoebe makes as a masseuse, though she gets tips. How do the characters on friends afford those great Manhattan apartments? Your guess is that Monica, type A, and properly employed as a chef,

likely covers most of the rent for hers and Rachel's apartment, and that Ross, of course, does all right as a paleontologist. Joey is an under-employed actor, so it's likely Chandler takes care of his and Joey's rent as a transponder or whatever it is that Chandler does for a living. You wonder if Chandler's job is supposed to be taking a toll on him this season. He's lost a lot of weight. You like skinny guys, though. Patrick Swayze and Dirty Dancing,

Johnny Depp and Crybaby. Those guys are skinny. Gorgeous. But Chandler seems so skinny now that you get the vibe that something's wrong, that he hasn't just traded the Ben and Jerry's for the TCBI. No. Chandler Bing, or the actor that plays him, rather, Matthew Perry,

looks ill. Starring on Friends was all Matthew Perry ever wanted. Well, being very good. famous was actually all Matthew Perry ever wanted. But starring on friends was how Matthew Perry was going to become famous. Acting out characters on doomed scripts for pilot season every year juiced Matthew's bank account enough to keep the drinks flowing down at the Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood with his buddies, fellow funny men, Hank Azaria and Craig Burko. But fame was not yet a reality. And Matthew needed to make it a reality. He didn't fully understand it.

the time, back in those pre-fame pre-friends days in the early 90s. But Matthew Perry needed fame like a junkie needs a fix, like an alcoholic needs a drink. He tasted it briefly acting alongside River Phoenix in the excellent film A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon and got brief snapshots of it from the various sitcom appearances he made in growing pains and in Beverly Hills 90210. The truth, though, is that Matthew had been catching the dopamine rush of adulation every time he'd entered a room since he was 14 years old. Being the son of an actor, the old Spice man himself, John Bennett Perry, and a famous Canadian political pro, Suzanne Langford Morrison,

press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Peter Trudeau, Matthew needed humor to stand out amongst his two charismatic and recognizable parents. It worked. people noticed Matthew. Everyone but his parents anyway, or so he thought. Their divorce at an early age scarred him. It left him marked by an unshakable sense of abandonment. He used humor to fight it off, to draw people into him,

to disarm people socially, and to distract everyone around him from what he thought were his obvious personality flaws. Like every great entertainer, Matthew Perry knew innately and from a young age that when he entered a room, he had to make you laugh until your sides hurt, and that when he exited the room, he needed to have the last laugh. Sometimes, innate wit wasn't enough socially. Alcohol helped.

It greased the social skids, making the jokes flow with a little less effort. Matthew discovered this as early as 14 years old, and his drinking persisted throughout the early days of, his young acting career. Not that that was unusual for a young aspiring actor in Hollywood at the time. Everyone had seen Drake and everyone wanted to be famous. When Matthew Perry first read the script for Friends, or for Six of One, as the show was initially titled, he knew that the role of Chandler Bing would make him famous. He was Chandler Bing. A character that used humor and sarcasm to mask his vulnerability, Matthew

couldn't think of a more accurate portrayal of him as a person. never mind a more perfect role for him to play. He read for the role, and he killed it. Then he got down on his knees and prayed to God, saying, God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous. God listened. God acted. Matthew Perry booked the role of Chandler Bing.

Friends aired on September 22nd, 1994, and was an instant smash. To say that Friends was a successful team, TV show is an understatement. We recognize it now as one of the most successful television shows of all time, and it was, but if you weren't there in the 90s during its run, especially the breakout hyper fame of those early seasons, it's hard to understand what the show actually was. It's no stretch to call it a cultural phenomenon. Understandably, people compare Friends to Seinfeld, but Friends did things Seinfeld never did.

Friends changed the way people dressed. Seinfeld never did that. Friends changed the way people wore their hair. Seinfeld never did that. Friends changed the way people spoke. Seinfeld never did that either. And friends made massive celebrities out of each of its stars. Seinfeld definitely never did that.

The influence of friends at the time is more akin to the influence of the Beatles, not of Seinfeld. But by season, Reason three of friends, Matthew Perry realized the full scope of what he had asked of God. Yes, God had made him famous, and yes, God was going to do whatever he wanted with him. Fame, Matthew Perry learned, was not enough. It didn't break the silence in his head at night. It didn't quell the fear that he wasn't good enough. It opened doors, sure, and, yes, Matthew consistently knocked everyone dead with laughs every time he walked through those doors, both on

on and off stage, but those laughs only went so far. At the end of the day, it was still just Matthew, alone, with himself, and the familiar thought that he wasn't enough. Soon, though, the alcohol wasn't enough either, not enough to keep his demons at bay. So Matthew turned to pills, opiates, Vicodin, and soon a tolerance was developed. So much so that by season three of the show that made him first, he was found. Famous, Matthew Perry was taking 55 pills a day to stay high. And when he wasn't chasing laughs on stage at the Warner Brothers Studio lot,

he was chasing down crooked doctors and nurses sympathetic to his fake migraines and TV star charm. 55 pills a day had utterly destroyed Matthew's appetite, knocking him down to a deathly looking 128 pounds. Season three of friends wrapped in the very famous Matthew Perry checked himself into rehab for the first of what would become an eventual 65 times in detox. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girl, I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed, I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction

or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole can. him in, broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that.

Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robeye, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton, the fabric of our lives.

Outside the Hazelden Betty Ford Drug Treatment facility in Center City, Minnesota, about 10 minutes across Interstate 494 is the tiny city of New Hope. There, back in 1997, the small paper shop, Hawks Hallmark Carly. magazines, newspapers, the New Hope Golden Valley Post News among them, not to mention candy, cigarettes, cigars, and scratch tickets. The magazine stand is one of a million you've seen before. It's filled with late 90s titles with covers featuring mega-famous celebrities blasting megawatt smiles back at prospective Middle American magazine readers.

Behind the glitzy confidence, if you squint, you'll see it. the faint vibe of desperation. It's hard to catch. Most confuse it with vulnerability. And yes, there is vulnerability there, but mostly it's A-list desperation. Celebrities appear to be on top of the world with confidence, especially when they're glitzed out on magazine covers under perfect lighting,

framed and captured by some of the most talented photographers in the world. But they're there for a reason, because they need your adoration. It feeds them. They need it more than money. Some need it more than love. Some even need it more than drugs. It was a jump ball,

the question of whether Matthew Perry needed your adoration more than he needed the drugs. Still, there he is. One of the biggest television stars on the planet, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, with the screaming headline, A Friend in Need. And there he is on the cover of people.

Another headline announces. Matthew Perry's addiction crisis. Other magazines, 17, GQ, and In-style, host other cover stars, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Miris Sorvino, and Helen Hunt, but all feature notices teasing Matthew Perry's recent stint in rehab, just up the road from New Hope at Hazelden. Where, at the moment, Matthew was using the rehab facility's wall for emotional support, Standing up, pressing the side of his face into the cold cement, his arms outstretched wide

and, in a way, pinning himself to the wall in a makeshift hug. Matthew needed the wall to be able to move. Matthew needed the wall for comfort. Matthew needed the wall because it was all he had besides the feeling that he was going to die. The voice told him so. Detoxing off of opiates won't kill you like detoxing off of benes. benzodia or alcohol will, but detoxing off of opiates will hurt so bad it'll make you wish you were dead. Opiate abuse, and taking 55 opiate laced pills a day certainly qualifies as abuse,

will also rewire your brain. It'll confuse your brain so severely that not only will your brain no longer process pleasure and pain the way a healthy brain does, but it'll also take you months, if not an entire year of solid sobriety, before your brain rewires itself back to normal. Matthew Perry was sober. He detoxed and stopped taking Vicodin and drinking vodka while in rehab. But he was utterly confused, violently sick, and felt like he was completely alone. Hugging the wall was all he had.

And somewhere in his drug-addled brain, there was a strange sense of comfort in realizing this. Being alone felt familiar. It seemed inevitable. The thing he feared the most had finally happened so he could stop worrying about it now. But then, that acknowledgement would get, the physical pain of addiction would return and once again consumed the 28-year-old television star.

In 1976, the British Medical Journal published a study by Dr. G. Edwards and M.M. Cross that diagnosed alcoholism as an illness, a disease. In 1981, a memorandum published by the World Health Organization broadened the original 1976 study to include other drugs as well. This meant that medically speaking, if you were an addict, your addiction was a disease, just like any other life-threatening disease, like, say, cancer or Alzheimer's. This was a massive shift from the prevailing attitude at the time that alcoholism and drug addiction

were choices people made. Having grown up in a town full of fellow Irishman and lots of friends of Bill Dulles, this classification of addiction as a disease is not news to me. But what is surprising is that to this day, people still believe that addiction is a choice. Whenever I post any information on an entertainer that I'm covering who dies of drug abuse or alcoholism, there's always a good portion of the comments

damning the addict for their choices in life. Given all that we know, this attitude in 2024 is shocking, not to mention ignorant. That said, it's a mistake that even I've made, despite knowing, on an intellectual level anyway, that addiction is a disease. In the past, I falsely believed that loved ones could get clean if they just tried a little harder, as if the deployment of personal effort alone could solve their illness. I'm embarrassed to say that despite my own deeply personal experiences with addicts, it wasn't until researching this episode that I realized the true name. of opioid addiction, and the Herculean effort it requires to detox from opiates. Detoxing permanently requires a wide array of tactics beyond willingness and resiliency.

Beating the disease, as Matthew Perry was learning during his first stint in rehab, necessitates a mix of not only personal grit, but psychological care, physical therapy, carefully administered medication, time, patience, and lots of love, both external and external and internal, not to mention luck. Defeating the disease of opiate addiction is an insanely steep uphill battle that is different for every addict. Back in the late 90s, you'd be hard pressed to find a doctor, a nurse, or a pain specialist, whatever the hell that is, or a big pharma sales rep, who would tell you that these prescribed opiates were even addictive when we now know the truth, that addiction to these pills to Vicodin to Oxycontin wasn't just a bug, it was practically a feature. And if, like Matthew

Perry, you were genetically predisposed to addiction, to the disease, the likelihood that you could stay clean after detoxing was slim to none. Sure, there were those who get clean off of opiates, but most need other addictive opiate medication like Suboxone or Methadone to do so. And yes, Some people do go cold turkey, but even so, sobriety is a daily battle, and the future is unwritten. Matthew Perry's future in 1997 was an abstract concept as he propped his body up in the halls of the Hazelden Rehab facility, drool running down his chin, hugging the wall. Once again, strange sounds rattled around his head. Coyotes and children in the clunky, half-mechanical, half-digital sound of something exciting,

shaking itself to life, a memory of a new hope. We'll be right back after this world, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends,

Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever,

my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. You're like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going,

and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robeye, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart podcast,

where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more. conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Cotton, the fabric of our lives. Before email, before cell phones, long before social media, fax machines were used to transmit the written word over long distances.

Matthew Perry's fax machine was working overtime lately in these heady early days of friends. A million-dollar offers for starring roles and films mostly, but that wasn't what had Matthew figuratively chained to his fax machine. No. What caused Matthew to not go too far from his fax and to race home after work to check its messages? Was the long-distance flirtation Matthew had going on

with the biggest movie star on the planet? Julia Roberts. Poems. Get to know you missives in conversations about their shared love. of the LA Kings. Conversations that started professionally, progressed quickly to personal, and then turned romantic, consumed Matthew's imagination. Soon, Julia Rap, production on Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, returned to the States, and she and Matthew started dating each other.

It was perfect, so it had to end. Matthew Perry couldn't handle a perfect relationship with the perfect woman whose love should have perfectly suited him. Because Matthew Perry knew in his bones that he was far from perfect and that someday Julia Roberts would realize this and she would leave him for it and that pain would hurt worse than him leaving her now. So Matthew Perry broke up with the biggest movie star on the planet who wanted nothing more than to be with him, to take care of him, and to share a future with him. Matthew's future was not to be shared with anyone or anything, except for what he called the big terrible thing, which was his consuming drug habit. The fact that Matthew had the number one television show in the world at the same time that he had the number one movie,

the whole nine yards, starring alongside the coolest dude Matthew had ever met, Bruce Willis. None of this changed Matthew's relationship with drugs and alcohol. If anything, the busier or more successful, the more famous Matthew got, the deeper he sunk into addiction. Hazelden worked in cleaning him up for a moment anyway, and then there was a slip-up. Then there was methadone to suppress the all-consuming need for opiates. Matthew never showed up high to work on the set of friends, but he was constantly hung over. Xanax, cocaine, the nightly court of vodka. The hangovers were intense until the lights went on and the director yelled,

action. Most times, Matthew could summon the strength to overcome the physical and mental pain, hit his mark and deliver his line as Chandler Bing. But once the director yelled, cut, Matthew would sink back into the prickly embrace of the big, terrible thing. Jennifer Aniston confronted him. Matthew's sense of professional pride kicked in, and another trip to rehab after Friends Wrapped was booked.

Once Matthew checked in, the effectiveness of rehab was now being challenged by an addict whose disease compelled him to manipulate the rules to find and use more drugs. It was a vicious predicament. Eventually, Matthew was discharged, but in short order, he started getting high again. And just as friends soared to new heights and popularity, Matthew once again crashed. Central Perk was one of those local coffee shops that no longer exists.

These days, coffee shops are about corporate efficiency and are run by corporate overlords. Order online to save time. Storm into the shop with earbuds on. Ignore conversation with any other customers lest they slow down your commute. be lined it to a special online takeout counter, pick up your order, perhaps grunt to the coffee shop worker behind the counter, and get out of there and out on the street with your earbuds back in and off to work so you can ignore a bunch of different people and slave away at your job for your very own corporate overlords. Or if you're, say, unemployed or underemployed or want to connect with an old friend,

you hit the coffee shop, stand in a different line one where you order in person, catch some attitude from the worker for not ordering online, wait, your coffee and you sit in hard, what are those seats made out of anyway, for mica, plastic, whatever they are, they are intentionally uncomfortable seats because Mr. Corporate Coffee doesn't want your underemployed ass hanging out in his coffee shop for too long because he needs to service new customers with new money. Coffee shops weren't always like this. And sure, a few of the old local shops still exist somewhere, I guess, but they're the minority, shops that encourage just hanging around. But that's what coffee shops were like in the 90s.

Coffee came in these big, massive cups that would more often than not get refilled for free. The seating was even bigger, puffier, huge, shabby-sheet furniture purchased in thrift shops and goodwills that seemed to invite you to take a load off, get comfy, and hang out with your friends as long as you like. The snacks were far from health conscious like they are today. They were loaded with sugar that would eventually make you sleepy and cause you to sink deeper into the big puffy chair you were sitting in. This is what central perk was like. The fictional coffee shop from friends, where Matthew Perry and his castmates were currently sitting filming a scene. Though it wasn't sugar causing Matthew to sink into his chair, it was his hangover. Matt LeBlanc, the actor who played Joey, was the only one who caught it, and thank God he caught it quickly.

Matthew's line was coming up, and it was a big one. One of those scene-ending side-splitting lines meant to punctuate the story with laughter, but there Matthew was. Matt saw it. Matthew was nodding off, literally falling asleep during the filming of the scene in front of a live studio audience. Matt LeBlanc quickly nudged him, and Matthew came too quickly, so quickly that no one had seen him nod off, and just in time for him to deliver the line. That night at home, Matthew buried this awful memory with vodka. Then he felt something twist in his side. This was not an ordinary pain. This was unlike anything. he'd ever felt in his 30 years on this planet, something was deeply wrong. Matthew was rushed to the emergency room, where he was informed by the attending doctor that he had acute pancreatitis

at just 30 years old from drinking massive amounts of alcohol. The pain was so severe that Matthew was kept in the hospital for 30 days and nights and administered Dilaudid for the pain. Dilaudid is an opiate, and Matthew Perry, despite the accommodations, was now a very serious. happy man. This drug not only handled the pain in his stomach, it changed his relationship with pain. It rewired his brain. It gave him a false sense of pleasure, of happiness. But what was happiness, really? Wasn't it all just relative? At the moment, Matthew didn't need anything. He had a bed, a TV, and a constant supply of drugs. He also had the highest paying job in television waiting for him when he eventually got out of the hospital.

When friends started out, David Schwimmer, the actor who played Ross, was the show's biggest star in terms of who the audience showed up to see each week. David Schwimmer had the genius idea early on in the show's run that no cast member, not even himself, who was the only one at the time of the position to do so, should make more money than any other cast member. He presented this idea to Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlank, Lisa Cudrow, and Matthew Perry.

who all, of course, thought it was a great idea, and why wouldn't they? David was the only one who could have commanded astronomical money, so whatever the suits at NBC needed to pony up to keep David happy, that was the same amount of money they were going to have to pony up for all of David's co-stars as well. David did this because he didn't want the hassle of constant salary fights between the studio and the show's six stars. David knew the studio would pit each of them against each other and that inevitably certain stars would fall out over salary beefs

need to be replaced, and the creative chemistry of the show would risk significant disruption. It was a genius idea on David's part, especially as the show grew in popularity and each of the star's own popularity grew, some of whom eventually surpassed David himself in popularity, Jennifer Aniston being one. Matthew Perry was not one. Matthew was a massive star, sure, but no one on the show was as big as Jennifer Aniston as friends entered the new millennium. Jennifer could have commanded a much bigger salary, but she didn't. Every movie studio in Hollywood wanted to put her in their movies and was willing to back up the money truck to make it happen.

So NBC needed a big enough payday for Jennifer Aniston to keep her happy and on Friends. And because of the deal, the Friends stars made back in the first season with David Schwimmer, NBC now had to back up the money truck for all of the co-stars on Friends, not just Jennifer Aniston, and of course Matthew Perry included, who was now in his hospital room, hooked up to a dilauded IV, high as a kite as he signed his new employment contract. The one that paid him, just as it did his five co-stars, $1 million per episode. Essentially $1 million per week.

$1 million times 24 episodes for the next season and $1 million for 18 episodes for the final season. $42 million. $10. Matthew Perry was about to be discharged from the hospital as a very, very rich man. And he was also about to be discharged from the hospital with an even stronger addiction to opiates than he had when he went in. Matthew Perry's luxury car screamed down the road, with Matthew curled up in a ball in the passenger seat and screaming in agony. His assistant had one hand on the wheel and another pinning her cell phone to her face. She was also screaming, high profile coming into ER, high profile. Matthew's

pain in his stomach was so severe that the tiniest bump in the road sent shocks of agony up his spine. Once at the emergency room, Matthew was quickly hoisted onto a wheel gurney. Get ready to run, one of the nurses said to his assistant. Matthew was strapped in, and the nurses sprinted him towards surgery. That's when Matthew Perry slipped into the coma. It was just before his colon exploded. Then he aspirated into his breathing tube

and proceeded to vomit 10 days of toxic feces into his lungs. Two weeks later, Matthew came out of the coma. It was 2018. Friends had long since ended in 2004. Matthew had navigated around his disease to work in various film, television, and stage productions, some successful, some not, but the end result was that Matthew's addiction prevented him from adequately managing the type of career that a celebrity of his stature is inclined to maintain. Matthew's personal life post-friends fared no better.

In the end, with every one of his girlfriends, whether Lauren Graham or Lizzie Kaplan, the woman he should have married, or any of the long line of beautiful women he dated both seriously and casually, it always came down to the same thing. Matthew would end the relationship before fully committing as a means of protecting himself from the inevitable pain he feared he would suffer when these women would eventually find out who he actually was and inevitably leave him. They'll never love you. Matthew had to leave first.

Matthew's personal life mostly devolved into an impersonal network of personal assistants, sober companions, crooked doctors and nurses who would prescribe him drugs and skeevy drug dealers. Not that he didn't have those around him who loved him. He did. His co-stars from friends stayed in contact. And his parents, his mother and his father, and his stepfather as well as his siblings,

all did their best to support him when Matthew allowed. And their help certainly inspired Matthew's intermittent sobriety. But the drugs and alcohol took a real toll. Matthew not only suffered a coma, but the CPR process left him with eight broken ribs. He lost teeth or a colostomy bag and ended up on life support. And the pain was immense, both real and imagined. So Matthew tried burying the pain with more drugs, and this resulted in more rehab stints. In 2020, in a Swiss rehab, Matthew's pain was being treated with daily ketamine infusions.

Matthew loved the high. He said it was like getting hit in the head with the happy shovel, but it wasn't enough. So he faked the pain to get more drugs. And during this time, Matthew needed another surgery. The doctors administered propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson. Matthew's heart stopped for a full five minutes. He was clinically dead, but miraculously was revived and survived.

After surgery, Matthew spent $175,000 to fly to Los Angeles to get the drugs he couldn't get in Switzerland. When he was refused the drugs in Los Angeles, he spent another $175,000 to fly back to Switzerland to take what they would give him. Matthew himself, in his 2002 autobiography, estimated that he had spent $9 million in total on his addiction over the years. 15 rehab stints, 14 surgeries, therapy two times a week, and over 6,000 AA meetings. Perhaps the AA meetings inspired Matthew to finally get clean for good at the start of the 2020s. There were those who believe, and I happen to be one of them, that good and evil are very real concepts. The dividing line is free will. We have free will to choose between good and evil, most of us anyway.

Addicts are responsible for their choices, certainly. But for those with the disease, it's not as simple as making a choice to get clean and sticking to it. Most addicts are good people who do not want to be addicted. It's the evil of the drug. It's the evil of the drug dealers. It's the evil of the predatory doctors and pharma shareholders that so forcefully challenged the addict's free will. Matthew Perry had the will to get clean. He found God.

and God spoke to him in a rare moment of clarity. God, by Matthew Perry's own estimation, as detailed in his autobiography, gave him purpose in life. And that purpose wasn't to be a father or a husband, as Matthew always desired. That purpose was to get clean and to use his experience with addiction to help others get clean, which he did. Even before Matthew had cleaned himself up, he converted his home in Malibu into a treatment facility called Perry House to have. help addicts. Beyond Perry House, Matthew helped his old drinking buddy Hank Azaria get clean. He helped strangers who approached him on the street get sober. He used his celebrity to advocate against the over-incarceration of drug offenders, testifying before a House subcommittee.

He regularly spoke at treatment centers. He spoke at a conference to hundreds of thousands of people over the course of one weekend. And he publicly put his own troubled experiences front and center in his later years in an effort to remove the stigma around addiction. Matthew's goal in life was no longer to be famous. He'd achieved that. And what he found was nothing. Fame is hollow. It doesn't fulfill you.

It eats you. Once achieved, and given that I'm not famous, I can hardly understand this, but I've researched enough entertainers to grasp a deeper understanding. But once achieved, fame is more of a burden than an asset. That seems to be the party line from every entertainer. The ones who are properly grounded are the ones who deal with it best. The ones who have psychological childhood trauma and addictive personalities like Matthew Perry, fame does more harm than good.

When auditioning for friends, Matthew Perry got down on his knees and prayed to God, saying to him, God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous. God answered Matthew's prayers. he made him famous. And that fame fed his addiction. And that addiction nearly destroyed Matthew Perry on numerous occasions.

That destruction put Matthew in a position where the only way to survive was to find real purpose, not fame as he hoped. But a purpose in life, one that would give him a new hope, the newfound purpose of helping others. In Matthew's position with his celebrity, that meant helping hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. Maybe not as many people as Matthew made laugh during his stint on friends. But what's more important?

Buzzy one-liners from Chandler Bing or saving people's lives from the evils of drugs and alcohol? God did indeed do what he wanted with Matthew Perry. He wanted Matthew Perry to help people with his life. The question remains, how many people will Matthew Perry's story help now that he's dead? Hold on. This story isn't over.

I've talked a lot about bad habits in this episode, and I, too, have bad habits. Not anywhere near Matthew Perry's bad habits, but I do have the toxic habit of sometimes checking Instagram first thing in the morning when I wake up. A couple of weeks ago, leery-eyed before my first espresso in the morning, I scrolled across an Instagram post suggesting that Matthew Perry was murdered. I was groggy, disassociated. I've been awake only seconds, and my stomach dropped. If for the past week I'd been deep into researching Matthew Perry and more specifically the life

he lived that led to his overdose and death on October 28, 2003. Chandler Bing was living rent-free in my head at the moment. And the idea that he was murdered, though, was shocking. But knowing what I'd recently learned, it didn't seem outlandish in the least. If one was going to get away with murdering a celebrity in 2003, a murderer would be hard pressed to find an easier victim than Matthew Perry. During his final days, Matthew had been back on drugs, subjecting himself to the glorious high of the happy shovel and undergoing legally administered ketamine infusions to treat his depression and anxiety. The ketamine Matthew had been legally administered

would have worn off by the time he died, and with the amount of ketamine in his system, authorities believed he had been obtaining ketamine illegally from a street source. And there was no murder. Just clickbait. Sort of. On August 16th, 2004, the U.S.S. Attorney's Office announced in a press conference that was nationally broadcast live on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News that five people have been arrested and charged in connection with the death of Matthew Perry. Two street dealers, Eric Fleming and another known as the ketamine queen, Jasveen Senga, along with two doctors, Salvador Placentia and Mark Chavez, and Matthew's live-in-personal-assistant, Kenneth Awamassa.

The five were charged with a mix of distribution, possession, and records falsification charges, but none with manslaughter or murder. Three of the five have already reached plea agreements. Dr. Placentia has pleaded not guilty. Text messages reveal that Placentia was actively praying on Matthew Perry's addiction. Saying about Matthew and a message to one of his alleged co-conspirators about the ketamine that Dr. Placentia was selling to Matthew Perry, quote, let's see how much this moron will pay, unquote.

I remind you, that text came from a doctor, illegally selling prescribed drugs on the street. In the end, it was too much for Matthew Perry, who on that day in late October, 2003, took his illegal dose of ketamine and slipped into his hot tub and his backyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He was found the next morning floating face down in the water. He drowned after the powerful effects of the ketamine

caused him to slip underwater unconscious. And there were no kids in the distance laughing. No coyotes. Not even any scary voices. No fear. No pain. And no one for Matthew Perry to leave before they broke his heart and left him.

Because Matthew Perry had just left for good. I'm Jake Brennan. This disgrace land. All right, that was a sad one, guys. I'm going to focus on something a little less emotional for this week's question of the week. We did a Friends in Seinfeld comparison in this episode. I'm actually more of a Seinfeld guy despite the way I laid up the two shows in this story. But that exercise prompted me to want to ask you guys,

what is the greatest television show of all time and why? Lots of great shows to choose from, but you can only choose one. 617-90666-638. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me at Disgrace. Pod as well on Instagram X and Facebook. I'm going to be sharing your answers on the after-party bonus episode that's coming up next.

Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here come some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axus member, thank you for supporting the show. we really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com slash membership.

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and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgraceland Pod Rocka Rolla. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this.

He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion. or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things,

Tena Mongeau, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words.

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