Over Halloween weekend, an actor most poeple of my generation know intimately passed away: Matthew Perry, who played Chandler "Muriel" (I saw a trivia question asking about his middle name) Bing on friends. Not Matthew Calbraith Perry who fought in the War of 1812 and opened Japan's doors to foreign trade, the funny Matthew Perry who was apparently originally from Canada where he was pretty good at tennis for a Canadian, but it turns out a country that sends all its best athletes into hockey and winter sports doesn't have too many great tennis stars. I know all this about Matthew Perry because immediately after his passing I put Matthew Perry's memoir "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing" on hold at the public library, hoping I'd be the first one to get the news and think to check out his memoir which just came out last year. Is this a faux pas to do? I felt just a tiny bit guilty about trying to "beat the crowds" to get at a recently dead man's book, like I was capitalizing on his death like buying art right before an artist is about to die.
I don't usually like to read celebrities' books because I don't like putting famous people on a pedestool (see many previous entries on this blog) but I wanted to read what most people were interested in: the stories about drugs. It's like when people bought Bill Clinton's first book after his presidency called "My Life": they all wanted to see what he had to say about Monica Lewinsky. I wasn't reading it to spite Matthew Perry or anything: I generally wanted to see how a seemingly good guy can just let drugs and alcohol spiral out of control and get addicted so many times, go through rehab so many times, only to relapse and get back on it. When I was a kid I always thought that only bad people were addicted to drugs and took to the streets; as an adult I realize it's not that simple. Apparently Perry was a colicky baby so he was fed barbiturates as a newborn baby to get him to calm down....that seems unhealthy and starting off life on the right foot. Kind of reminds me of how lucky I got to not be pre-trained to have a disposition towards drugs, or be in an environment growing up of drug use, or have that much of an addictive personality. Perry apparently had all of those, and as much as I wanted to point out holes in his story about blaming addiction like "HA! You had a choice! Don't just blame it on drugs!" I couldn't help but wonder if there are good people who just can't control themselves. Perry says that "he can only control the first sip of alcohol...." once he's had one, he's going to have them all. Fatalistic catchphrases like "you take the first drink of alcohol, but then the alcohol drinks you..." or something like that.
Especially now with really lethal substances in street drugs (aka fentanyl) and opiates, it is SO DANGEROUS to do drugs (although Perry apparently did not have meth or fentanyl in his system and his death is being called a drowning so far)... it is literally life and death. Perry called the drugs and alcohol in a lethal combination the "Big, Terrible Thing," aptly named because it really is like an invisible demon you carry inside you that makes you a zombie (I've been hearing a lot of people call San Francisco the scene of the zombie apocalypse because of the drug users, and from the little time I spent there in 2018 that I've hard the 2023 version is a lot worse, I'd have to agree) that can focus on nothing else but brains......... I do think those drugs do rewire one's brain so that you only get stimulated by those drugs... the drugs just take over all of the impulses and instincts that a brain normally would do. That's what I always say, you can get hurt playing sports or other body parts, but you gotta protect the brain, from the outside (skull) and inside (drugs). Such a shame, I had a good time reading Perry's book, I recognized a lot of the comedic timing and writing that made Friends gold (Perry apparently pitched a lot of jokes for the show); it's too bad there won't be any more of his work. Just 54 years old; I would be distrought if I knew right now I'd live to 54, and he died without any children, which he laments throughout various parts of the book, one of the greatest joys in life sacrificed mainly because he couldn't settle down due to drugs, even a guy as successful as Matthew "Chandler Bing" Perry. Really is a big, terrible thing.
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