The last photo posted (him in a swimming pool, at night, headphones listening to music) is dramatically similar to the image the police officers found themselves in front of when they entered his Los Angeles home: Matthew Perry drowning in his hot tub. The actor – a global success thanks to the sitcom “Friends” – died at the age of just 54. No drugs were found at the crime scene, nor is there any serious suspicion of a robbery: currently the police’s preferred lead seems to be that of illness.
Five years ago he began his autobiography (Friends and the Terrible Thing): “Hello, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name.” My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead. Perry took off the mask of the successful actor and faced the terrible thing: his addiction to alcohol and drugs. A “lethal diet” consisting of vodka (one bottle per evening), cocaine, opiates (at one point he took 55 Vicodin tablets per day), benzodiazepines (i.e. Xanax and any medication with anti-anxiety effects).
The actor said that his life was actually hell, always on the edge of the abyss. Because behind the shine of Hollywood lights often hide the long shadows of (de)depression that many cannot bear.
His father’s abandonment when he was young, his arrival in Hollywood, his wives (including Julia Roberts, whom he left because “I was too afraid of being abandoned”), his 15 attempts at rehabilitation, his 14 colon surgeries. When he was 49, the actor was one step away from death: two weeks in a coma and then another five months in the hospital. When he was admitted to the hospital, doctors told his family that he had only a 2% chance of survival: “In your place, they hooked me up to a machine that breathes.” It’s nicknamed Hail Mary because none survived . That night, five people in that car had been attacked: four died, while I survived: Why? Why me?”.
He revealed that his alcohol addiction was still in its infancy when he started acting in Friends at the age of 24. “I managed somehow, but at 34 I was really in trouble. I didn’t know how to stop. His castmates were “understanding and patient; It’s like penguins in nature: when one of them is sick or injured, he is surrounded and supported by the others; They circle around him until the penguin can walk on his own. That’s part of what the cast did for me. The 14 stomach operations were a warning in the form of scars: “The wounds are many reminders to stay sober.”
His career is linked to a single but indelible title: Friends, ironically, told the dreams and concerns of a generation. He worked with Salma Hayek (“Apple and Tequila”) and Bruce Willis (“FBI: Witness Protection”), had roles in series such as “West Wing,” “Ally McBeal,” “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and “ The Good Wife,” but nothing was as cynical as him. The sarcastic Chandler Bing from Friends is constantly unhappy about his parents’ divorce, about not having a stable relationship, about his frustrating job, about his first name and about the success of others at Women.
Friends’ Instagram profile remembered him with a post (“We are devastated, his life was a gift to all of us”) and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with whom he attended the same school, did not forget him as a child ( “Matthew Perry’s death is shocking and sad. I will never forget the games we played in the schoolyard, and I know people around the world will never forget the joy he brought them. Thank you for all the laughter, Matthew. You were loved and will be missed.”
It was the very fragile life of a man animated by a blind and very human desire for recognition that drove him to fame and at the same time to an immense inner emptiness that could not be filled even by the realization of his greatest dreams. Addiction is always nearby, like a constantly loaded gun ready to fire at any moment: “Robert Downey Jr. once said of his addiction: “It’s like having a gun in your mouth and your finger on the trigger, and I like that .” the taste of metal. I understood what he meant; I understand it. Even on good days, when I’m sober and looking to the future, it’s always with me. There is always a weapon.