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Known the world over as Chandler Bing, Matthew Perry was a Friend to all.

But he also had a long and well-documented history of struggling with alcohol addiction, the “big, terrible thing” that he had referenced in the title of his memoir last year giving equal weight to the sitcom Freinds that made him such a loved celebrity.

On Saturday evening, the 54-year-old actor was found dead in a jacuzzi in Los Angeles, and in the first hours following the news of his death, some fans and friends of Perry wondered whether his substance-related struggles played a role in his untimely passing.

The Los Angeles Police Department reportedly found no drugs at the scene of the death investigation, and there is no foul play suspected. His initial post-mortem reports are also “inconclusive” at this stage, with further investigations underway.

His last Instagram post is rather chilling in the context of his death:

 

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A post shared by Matthew Perry (@mattyperry4)

Sadly, it seems Perry was resigned to a short life and a young death. Reading his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, you’ll grasp a portrait of a man intent on his own destruction, reported The Guardian.

Perry characterised himself as a ready-made, just-add-water addict: an alcoholic with his first drink at the age of 14, and hooked on painkillers with his first pill, prescribed after a jetski accident.

Image:MatthewPerryBook

High, he drove a red Mustang convertible across the desert, feeling “complete and utter euphoria”: “I remember thinking, ‘If this doesn’t kill me, I’m doing this again.’” It didn’t then.

He had gone on publicised rehab stints in 1997, 2001, and 2011, and even told BBC Radio 2 in 2016 that he “[doesn’t] remember three years” of Friends, “somewhere between Season 3 and 6.

At the age of 30, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis–one of the many results of his addictions. Nearly 20 years later, at the age of 49, Perry suffered a perforated colon and nearly died. He spent nearly half a year hospitalised, and he was only given a 2% chance of survival at the time. Perry revealed in the book that he had 14 operations on his stomach. Over time, the scars from his surgeries motivated him to stay sober, along with his friends:

The success of Friends – not to mention the support from his castmates, his real-life friends – was what helped him to survive, Perry wrote. “There was no way I could have been a journeyman actor. I wouldn’t have stayed sober for that; it was not worth not doing heroin for that … When you’re earning $1m a week, you can’t afford to have the 17th drink.”

Perry managed to more or less keep it together over 10 seasons and 236 episodes, but while juggling his ferocious substance abuse is only further testament to his talent, he knew it was what would kill him in the end.

“There are two kinds of drug addicts,” Perry wrote of his preference for opiates over cocaine. “The ones who want to go up, and the ones who want to go down … I wanted to melt into my couch and feel wonderful.”

You can only hope that, now, he is as close to happiness as he felt that morning in the red Mustang.

[source:guardian]