As I was sitting in my office, completing the edits of my Golden Bachelor video, my Yahoo news alerts pops up on my phone and I caught a glimpse of the words of Matthew Perry’s name and I grabbed my phone to read, “Matthew Perry dead at 54, according to reports”.
I thought to myself, this can’t be true. TMZ has gotten things wrong in the past.
Then of course I went on different news outlets, all were noting the same headlines.
“Apparent drowning, in his jacuzzi”.
As the social outlets filtered the news with his death, I wondered who were the ones that will suspect he relapsed. As a recovering addict, the stigma still sticks, as speaking to someone about it, they mentioned how suspicious they were of the whole thing, “didn’t they find prescription drugs”?
“Well of course that would be the focal point”, I thought to myself.
Society has its own point of view on sober people vs using people. We are all the same in the sense, the ones who are sober, will eventually use again, due to some “catastrophic” event we can’t handle, and go back to what we know.
Matthew Perry, better known for his character Chandler Bing on the television show “Friends” or Miss Chanandler Bong” (if you watch that episode you know exactly which one it is), admits and even wrote a memoir of his life experiences dealing with addiction and how he was currently helps people who want to get clean and sober.
In 12 step meetings, we are all known for saying, “You can’t keep what you have unless you give it away”. My first thought upon hearing those words was, why would I want to give anything away from what I learned. Bill and Bob from AA knew exactly what they were doing when they came together to talk about what they were dealing with and within that one hour they remained sober, and that hour turned to another and so forth. The idea being, if you can do it for one, you can do it for multiple hours.
For anyone sober reading this, You got this!
I have watched a lot of different videos this past week regarding Matthew Perry and reading the comments from non addicts who claim to understand his struggles.
Believe me when I tell you, non addicts, you DO NOT understand. And please know, I do not say this with any disdain, but know - using drugs isn’t a glamourous life.
Drinking and falling down may be funny at first, but it isn’t funny when you’re lying in your bed and wondering how you even got there, not realizing you were in blackout mode the whole time. Understand, you will never recover any memories in blackout mode.
Being caught in the grips of drug addiction is a feeling as though there’s nothing that can resolve the inner pain you feel.
The lies which swirl deep within our conscious telling us, “We understand” is the jail we create in our minds believing over and over that next high will fix the feelings of self-loathing, insecurity, jealousy, and any other character flaw we have created in our minds, only another addict can best understand that part of addiction.
If you’ve been inside that jail, you know.
Now, I am not saying, only addicts suffer from feeling inadequate. There are many people who feel insecure about themselves in one form or another and their addiction to “cure” those feelings away could be anything, from shopping, to overeating, anything that would be considered, out of the “norm” in order to resolve an issue you may be having.
During the pandemic, I must have been channel surfing when I caught the marathon of Friends on Nick at Night. Even though they skipped episodes (You can watch all episodes on MAX), it was great to relive episodes and discover the ones I missed back in the day when the show was on the air. It was like building a whole new relationship from episode one, where it seemed they were all finding their footing in their characters and then they became the characters. Every one of those characters was a bit of me and everyone else who experienced this show, from the first time the show aired and then time again afterwards, can all say the same. For some people the show saved their lives, experiencing difficult moments themselves.
I know in the next coming weeks news reports will talk more about his addiction than the actor himself. The question is, how will they talk about his struggles. Will they praise it or leave him stuck in a subliminal world of a using addict, who’s clean time was “short lived”? Sometimes the fan fair of the struggle and the ugliness of addiction will make “better headlines” than focusing on the good and the positive Matthew Perry did for himself and his peers.
Matthew Perry said he wanted to be remembered for helping others, he will also be remembered for his comedic talent and his timing in delivering those famous lines on “Friends”, one of them being my favorite, when Monica finds the video of her younger days of being overweight and she said the camera adds 10 pounds on you and Chandler response was, “Uh so exactly how many cameras are actually on you”.
He also mentioned it was difficult for him to watch the show, since every season seemed to define where he was in his addiction. It was clear you can see there were problems.
I want to include something else, something disturbing.
When it comes to the religious rights who believe and promote fake gods like Jesus and making claims how we have to turn our lives around while using the vaccine as a political forum to blame for Matthew Perry’s death.
Let me make myself very clear. I am not a religious person. Religion is the reason we are at war every day, just turn on the news.
To use Matthew Perry or anyone else for that matter to promote inaccuracies and spreading outrageous nonsense of biblical books, which also, isn’t real, YOU are not of sound mind.
Propagating these false stories will not get anyone to change their minds or their hearts on how they choose to live in taking care of their own personal health and mental wellbeing.
Most of these religious nutcases are not doctors, although in their minds, they think they are.
You represent the most cantankerous group of people, always finding something to dispute what you think is wrong, while maintaining the false narrative of you being right when in fact, you are not.
Someone like Kandiss Taylor, spreading false propaganda and using someone like Matthew Perry to spread that information is just a prime example of what it means to be lower than a disgusting piece of shit in a farm field, especially when her political slogans were “Jesus, Guns and Babies”.
I didn’t like that had I had to include this in my article, but it was very much needed to be addressed, as using Matthew Perry or anyone else with common sense who has passed away and cannot speak for themselves, disrespects the memory of someone who did nothing but his best in his career and personal life.
In closing, a reporter for the Today show, interviewed James Burrows who directed many of the “Friends” episodes asked, “How would you like Matthew to be remembered”?
Jim responded, “as a wonderful actor, a funny man, and a dear friend to a lot of people”.
I always remind people, before you take that route, choose your battles wisely.
And when you do, how would you like to be remembered?
Until then.
