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 nine million dollars spent on fighting an 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've played few at the top of the show that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Unskinny Tata one. 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 twenty two, nineteen ninety four, 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, Akedemy and Queen, and Matthew Perry. I'm Jake Brennan in.
This this Disgraceland.
There is a weight to silence.
It's heavy.
Children in the house mean 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 brushfires, constantly springing to life.
It's a game of whack a mole.
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, they'll.
Never love you, they always.
Leave, 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 anytime soon. He'd do anything to end this horrific sound. But then what then It was 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 whip smart wit to say, And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why they invent did
drugs and alcohol. All your friends smoke newports. It's a drag. The menthol smell is gross. You need twin blasts of banaka 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, nineteen ninety six, a school night, eight pm. You got 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 Seinfelder, So you think, what's with that dude's style anyway? Tight jeans and turtlenecks, nap 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. Whatever Joey lays out his signature, you doing, Ross is about to mess.
Up big time.
He's way too jealous of Rachel's coworker at Blooming Nails.
Blooming Nails.
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 board stoner's from your school.
Stoner's 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.
Out of 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 alright as a palaeontologist. Joey is an underemployed actor, so it's likely Chandler takes care of his and Joey's rent as a transponster 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 cry Baby.
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 tcby 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 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 Foremosa 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 at the time, back in those pre fame, pre Friends days in the early nineties, 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 nine O two one zero. The truth, though, is that Matthew had been catching the dopamine rush of adulation every time he'd entered a room since he was
fourteen 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 Pierre Trudeau. Matthew needed hum or to stand out amongst his two charismatic and recognizable parents.
It worked.
People noticed Matthew, everyone but his parents anyway, or so we thought. Their divorce at an early age scarred him. It left him marked by an unshakable sense of abandonment that 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 side's 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 skits, making the jokes
flow with a little less effort. Matthew discovered this as early as fourteen 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 seemed drink 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 in 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 twenty second, nineteen ninety four, and was an instant smash. To say that Friends was a successful TV show is an understatement. We recognize it now as one of the most tcessful television shows of all time, and it was. But if you weren't there in the nineties 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 morrikin to the influence of the Beatles, not of Seinfeld. But by season 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 call the fear that he wasn't good enough.
No one won't ever love you.
It opened doors, sure, and yes, Matthew consistently knocked everyone dead with laughs every time he walked through those doors, both 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, the opiate's vicotin and soon a tolerance was developed, so much so that by season three of the show that made him fain, Matthew Perry was taking fifty five pills a day to stay high, and when he wasn't chasing lass on stage at the Warner Brothers studio lot, he was chasing down crooked doctors and nurses
sympathetic to his faked migraines and TV star charm. Fifty five pills a day had utterly destroyed Matthew's appetite, knocking him down to a deathly looking one hundred and twenty eight 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 sixty five times in detox outside the Hazelt and Betty Ford Drug Treatment Facility in Center City, Minnesota, about ten minutes across Interstate four
ninety four is the tiny city of New Hope. There, back in nineteen ninety seven, the small paper shop, Hawk's, Hallmark cards, 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 nineties titles, with covers featuring mega famous celebrities, lasting megawatts smiles backup 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 seventeen, GQ, and in Style host other cover stars Jennifer Love, Hewitt, Mira Servina, 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, you'll never live like a real man. Detoxing off of opiates won't kill you like detoxing off of Ben's a dream or alcohol will. But detoxing off of opiates will hurt so bad it'll make
you wish you were dead. Opiate abuse and taking fifty five opiate lace pills a day certainly qualifies this 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 in Somewhere in his drug addled brain. There was a strange sense of comfort in realizing this. Being alone felt familiar. It seemed inevitable, like the thing he feared the most had finally happened, so he could stop worrying about it now. But then that acknowledgment would get buried.
Very capable of joy.
And the physical pain of addiction return and once again consumed the twenty eight year old television star. In nineteen seventy six, the British Medical Journal published a study by doctors G.
Edwards and M. M.
Cross that diagnosed alcoholism as an illness a disease. In nineteen eighty one, a memorandum published by the World Health Organization broadened the original nineteen seventy six 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 irishmen and lots of friends of Bill w 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 twenty twenty four 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 believe 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 nature 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, and 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 internal. Not to mention luck defeeding the disease of opiate addiction is an insanely
steep uphill battle that is different for every addict. Back in the late nineties, you'd be hard pressed to find a doctor, a nurse, or a pain specialist, whatever the hell that is, or a big pharm of 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 vic it into oxycon 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 syboxone methadone to do so. And yes, some people do go cold turkey, but even so sobriety is a daily battle. In the future is unwritten.
Matthew Perry's future in nineteen ninety seven 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, and the clunky, half mechanical, half digital sound of something exciting shaking itself to life, a memory of a new hope.
Are you right back after this?
We're we're where? 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. Million dollar offers for starring roles in films mostly, but that wasn't what had Matthew figuratively chained to his fax machine. Now we'll cause Matthew to not go too far from his facts and to race home after work to check
its messages. Was a long distance flirtation Matthew had going on with the biggest movie star on the planet, Julia Roberts poems Get to Know Your Missives, and conversations about their shared love of the La Kings. Conversations that started professionally progressed quickly to personal and then romantic, consumed Matthew's imagination. Soon Julia rapt 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 cut, 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 hungover xanax, cocaine, the nightly Court of vodka. The hangovers were intense until the lights went on and
the director yelled to 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 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 attic 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 less they slow down your commute, and be lined 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 could 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 shops. Stand in a different line, one where you order in person, catch some attitude from the worker for not ordering online. Wait, grab your coffee, and you sit in hard What are
those seats made out of anyway? For Micah plastic, whatever they are, they are intentionally uncomfortable seats because mister 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 nineties.
Coffee came into these big, massive cups that would more often than not get reft for free. The seating was even bigger, puffy or huge shabby sheet furniture purchased in thrift shops and good wills 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 cast mates 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 as sleep during the filming of the scene in front of a live studio audience. Matt leblank quickly nudged him, and Matthew came too quickly, so quickly that no one had seen him not 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 twisted in his side. This was not an ordinary pain. This was unlike anything he'd ever felt in his thirty 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 a cute pancreatitis set just thirty years old from drinking massive amounts of alcohol.
The pain was so severe that Matthew was kept in the hospital for thirty days and nights and administer dilauded for the pain. Dilauded as an opiate that Matthew Perry, despite the accommodations, was now a very 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 yet 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 Shwimmer 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 in the position to do so, should make more money than any other cast member. He presented this idea to Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, matt LeBlanc, Lisa Coudro, 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 that 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, 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 Friend stars made back in the first season with David Swimmer, 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, one million dollars
per episode, essentially one million dollars per week, one million dollars times twenty four episodes for the next season, and one million dollars for eighteen episodes for the final season forty two million dollars. 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 and the passenger seved and screaming in agony. His assistant had one hand on the wheel and another pinning her cellphone 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 ten days of toxic feces into his lungs. Two
weeks later, Matthew came out of the coma. It was twenty eighteen Friends had long since ended in two thousand and four. 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, had 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, they always leave. 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 skeevie 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 back and ended up on life support. Then the pain was immense, both real and imagined, so Matthew tried burying the pain with more drugs, and this resulted in more rehabstance. In twenty twenty, 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 one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars 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 one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to fly back to Switzerland to take.
What they would give him.
Matthew himself, in his twenty twenty two autobiography, estimated that he had spent nine million dollars in total on his addiction over the years, fifteen rehabstance, fourteen surgeries, therapy two times a week, and over six thousand AA meetings. Perhaps the AA meetings inspired Matthew to finally get cleaned for good. At the start of the twenty twenties, 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 attics 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 addicts 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 help attics. 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 overincarceration 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 of it. 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. And 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 new found purpose of helping others. In Matthew's position with his celebrity, that men helping hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
Maybe not as many pe people as Matthew made laugh during his stint on Friends, But what's more important, buzzy one liners from Chandler BNG were 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, bleary 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. My stomach 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 twenty eighth, twenty twenty three. 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 twenty twenty three, 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 ketemie 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 sixteenth, twenty twenty four, the US 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, Jazvine Sanga, along with two doctors, Salvador Placentia and Mark Chavez, and
Matthew's live in personal assistant, Kenneth Awamasa. And 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. Doctor 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 ketemine that doctor Placentia was selling to Matthew Perry quote, let's see how much this moron will pay un quote. I remind you that text came from a doctor illegally selling prescribed drugs on the street.
Evil.
In the end, it was too much for Matthew Perry, who, on that day in late October twenty twenty three, took his illegal dose of ketamine, then slipped into his hot tub in 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 ketemie 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 and this this Disgrace Lam.
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 guide 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 six one seven nine oh six six six three eight. Leave me a voicemail, send me a text and let me know. You can also reach me at disgrace lampod as well on Instagram, X and Facebook. I'm gonna 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. Disgrace Slam 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 disgracelampod.
Dot com.
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He then