PDF Summary:Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, by Matthew Perry

You’ve seen him play a cigarette-smoking, intimacy-fearing, humor-as-a-cudgel-wielding twenty-something from a broken home trying to find love and build a meaningful career. But Matthew Perry’s role as Chandler on the iconic show Friends is a lot closer to reality than you might have imagined. In Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry shares his story of battling loneliness, health scares, and the big terrible thing: addiction. His hope is that it will help others who are also struggling with substance abuse know they are not alone in their challenges, and that, if he could get sober, they can, too.

This guide explores the evolution of three major themes throughout Perry’s life: his addiction, struggles in establishing relationships, and his search for fame. We also contextualize the events and struggles of his life within psychological theories about childhood trauma, attachment theory, and the nature of addiction and recovery.

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Prime Time Success

Friends was a career and culture-defining hit. There were several reasons the show was so successful, including:

The ensemble cast’s chemistry. The show’s producers nurtured that chemistry from the beginning by providing the six stars with plenty of opportunities to get to know each other. For example, the producers sent them to Las Vegas for a weekend before the show’s premiere so they could all enjoy one last weekend of anonymous fun. (Shortform note: The chemistry between the stars was so strong that the audience responded more favorably to a scene where the six of them talked about something than to eventful scenes without all of them present.)

The actors knew the show would be successful if their camaraderie was organic. This kept them from trying to outshine their castmates and encouraged them to negotiate their salaries together—led by David Schwimmer—and make sure they all made the same from each episode. (Shortform note: Their camaraderie made it an early positive example of gender equality. Since all six decided to negotiate their salaries together, it ensured the three women were paid equally to their male counterparts, something that actresses still struggle with today.)

The collaborative nature of the set. Anyone could get their joke included in an episode if it was funny. Perry and David Schwimmer (who played Ross) contributed the most jokes, for their own characters and for their castmates. (Shortform note: Perry credits Courtney Cox (who played Monica) with setting a collaborative tone among the stars. She was the most famous of the six, but she stressed the fact that they were an ensemble. Elsewhere, Lisa Kudrow (who played Phoebe) shared that Cox asked her costars to give her notes, breaking an unspoken rule among actors and opening the door to collaboration.)

The writers also fed off the actors’ ideas and lives. Early on, they took each star to lunch to get to know them and incorporate some of their real-life traits into their characters. This helped emphasize the similarities between Perry and his character, such as a fear of intimacy, an addiction to cigarettes, and the use of humor to hide underlying emotional pain. (Shortform note: The writers also incorporated feedback from the actors. Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey, worried that his part would get cut if the show did a romantic storyline about him and one of the female characters and it ended up not working out. So, he asked that his character be a protective figure of the three women and that he never get involved with them romantically.)

An Addiction and Recovery Rollercoaster

Getting cast in Friends was a turning point in Perry’s life. On the one hand, he believes it saved his life. He staved off the worst of his addiction (for example, avoiding heroin because he knew it would be impossible to quit) and tried to stay healthy because he loved his job and he knew how lucky he was to have it. On the other hand, Perry feels that God upheld his end of the bargain—made him famous—but also made sure to collect Matthew’s end and put him through challenges that almost broke him.

During Friends’s 10-year run (1994-2004), Perry went to rehab several times. The first time was in 1997, but he went back to drinking soon after. In 2000, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis as a result of heavy drinking. He received treatment but he went back to Vicodin and alcohol when he recovered.

(Shortform note: Perry’s frequent rehab stays and subsequent relapses reflect a fact of addiction recovery: Relapse is to be expected. People who are in recovery from drug or alcohol abuse often relapse several times, even after years of being sober. It doesn’t mean they’ve failed at recovery—it just means that recovery is an ongoing challenge. Interestingly, the rates of relapse among people suffering from addiction are around 50%, similar to those of people suffering from other chronic illnesses, such as asthma and hypertension.)

Perry tried and failed to keep his drinking from affecting his job. He says he was never drunk on set, but he was frequently hungover, and his costars became aware of his problem. At one point, Jennifer Aniston (who played Rachel in Friends) told him they could smell the alcohol on him and they were worried. The viewers also had some insight into his health thanks to his noticeable weight fluctuations. He says that the seasons where he’s underweight are the ones where he was addicted to pills, and the seasons where he’s overweight are the ones where he’s drinking too much.

When he realized the cast and crew of Friends were onto him, he started working on a movie, Serving Sara, to escape the show’s set. His performance in the movie was so bad that he later had to dub over his lines because he had been slurring them. He also had to pay the production for damages because they needed to stop filming so he could go to rehab.

At one point during the filming of Serving Sara, his then-girlfriend told him he needed help. She took him to a detox center where he first read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Reading the book helped him understand he was being narcissistic and selfish. He tried going back to work on the set of Friends after three weeks, but his father intervened. He called the producers and threatened to pull Matthew off the show if they insisted on having him back before he was well.

After a month in the detox center, he was sent to a long-term care facility because he still needed support. He ended up staying there for three months, but he simultaneously returned to work. In fact, he was living at the center when the highest point of his character’s story arc aired: the wedding of Chandler and Monica.

Trapped in an Anxiety Loop

Perry’s spiral into substance abuse shows how his anxieties about work, substance abuse, and people’s perceptions of him all contributed to his deepening addiction. In Unwinding Anxiety, Judson Brewer explains anxiety’s tendency to reinforce itself by eliciting behaviors that lead to more anxiety. Brewer explains that once we feel anxious, anxiety becomes a trigger for new (often unhealthy) behavioral loops that incorporate more and more unhealthy behaviors. In Perry’s case:

• Trigger: He felt anxiety about his costars knowing he had a substance abuse problem, plus he likely felt anxiety about how much he was drinking and how his drinking might be harming his career.

• Behavior: More worrying, more drinking, and new harmful habits like taking pills to hide a hangover.

• Result: He experienced more anxiety than ever before so he decided to flee the Friends set. Then he experienced the physical harm of the substance abuse plus the negative impact on his work.

• Lesson: At this point, he likely started judging himself for how he handled the situation, for how much he drank, and even for feeling anxiety in the first place. This judgment then fed more cycles of anxiety.

After that stay in the treatment center, he was sober for two years (2001-2003), which he believes were two of the best years of his life. During that time, he was nominated for an Emmy and he found purpose in helping other people get sober. But Perry’s struggle with addiction wasn’t over. In fact, it would get so intense that he would even have a spiritual experience.

In 2003, a relationship he was in ended badly and he went back to pills. At one point, he was unable to sleep and took eight Xanax pills at once. Standing in his kitchen, he prayed to God for help because he knew that going from eight pills to zero in a matter of hours was dangerous and might even kill him. After praying, he saw a golden light and felt a warmth around him that he attributed to God. After the light and warmth were gone, he cried with relief because he felt he had been in the presence of God.

A Possible Interpretation of Perry's Spiritual Experience

Perry’s spiritual experience might be an example of grace. According to psychotherapist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, grace refers to God’s force that moves through us. However, people are not always open to noticing grace so manifestations of it aren’t immediately obvious to them. You can recognize manifestations of grace because:

• They contribute to and protect the growth of the human spirit. Perry’s encounter with the golden light protected his spirit because it helped him feel saved by God.

• They don’t make total sense or they completely defy the laws of nature. The light Perry saw couldn’t be clearly explained by laws of nature.

• They do not originate in the conscious mind and they cannot be deliberately summoned by the conscious will. Perry was under the influence of a high dose of opioids, so he couldn’t consciously originate the experience he had.

Struggles in Relationships

The breakup in 2003 that led him back to pills was only one of Perry’s many failed romances with women during this time. He was in several relationships, but he always ended them. He feared that they would get too close, see who he really was, and break up with him, so—in all but one of his relationships—he broke up with them before they had the chance to hurt him.

While he was sober from 2001-2003, he was mostly single. He broke up with the woman who took him to rehab because he wanted to enjoy his sobriety. He proceeded to have a string of casual relationships that he enjoyed but now considers to have been a mistake—he wishes he had invested that time in looking for a more meaningful relationship. (Shortform note: Perry’s approach to relationships suggests that he might be an avoidant attacher. In Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller explain that a person with an avoidant attachment style doesn't possess a compelling desire to achieve closeness with a romantic partner. When the partnership gets too close, they feel suffocated.)

The End of an Era

In 2004, Friends came to a close. When the show ended, Perry and his castmates were ready to say goodbye to their characters. Still, the finale was emotional and the entire cast and crew—except Perry—were in tears that last day. He claims he didn’t feel anything, probably because he was taking Buprenorphine, an opioid that helps people get over addictions to other opioids but made him feel numb. However, he realized the show’s ending was momentous and he asked the producers to have the honor of delivering the last line.

(Shortform note: Perry’s emotional numbness may have prevented him from being part of a special moment with his co-stars after the end of the show. In the memoir, he describes taking a walk around the set, then sitting in his car for a long time before deciding to go home. But in interviews, Jennifer Aniston shared that a few of the stars stayed on set drinking champagne and watching the sun rise, which she described as a wonderful moment.)

After the show ended, he continued to feel the impact of Friends in his life. He struggled with being typecast and with people seeing him as Chandler in every role he played. Still, he acknowledges that he is lucky to be typecast into a role that was part of such an impactful show that made him so successful and wealthy.

(Shortform note: The impact of Friends lives on, not just for Perry. In recent years, thanks to streaming services, new generations have discovered the show and renewed its following. One of the show’s creators argues that this is because it’s the equivalent of comfort food in television: easy to love and not demanding of its viewers.)

Life After Friends

After Friends, Perry tried to grow beyond Chandler, the role he had become synonymous with. He focused on dramatic work and even received award nominations for a movie he starred in, The Ron Clark Story. However, none of the TV shows he worked on after Friends were successful.

(Shortform note: Perry’s decision to branch out into dramatic work was a way for him to break out of his typecasting rut, a pitfall of fame that affects many successful actors.)

With no real purpose to keep him sober, Perry’s unhealthy patterns of behavior worsened. In this section, we’ll explore how he continued to abuse substances even after a couple of near-death experiences, and how he pushed away any woman who got close to him.

Relapse, Rehab, Recover, Repeat

After Friends ended, Perry’s addiction accelerated. In 2013 he went into rehab for the third time. During that stay, he found that helping the other residents have fun made him feel useful. However, his counselor questioned why he was having fun at rehab and pointed out that he enjoyed the chaos that addiction created in his life. At first, Perry was offended by this remark, but then he found that there was some truth to it.

During that same rehab stay, he had an epiphany. He didn’t want to invite anyone to family and friends night at the center because he didn’t want to put any of his loved ones through another ordeal related to his addiction. But then he asked himself why he didn’t give himself the same courtesy. He concluded that he needed to permit himself to let go of the inner conflicts that kept him trapped in addiction. But the realization didn’t lead to him applying the lessons learned right away, and he eventually relapsed.

After leaving rehab, he got involved in activism. He advocated for the use of drug courts that would allow drug offenders to be sent to rehab facilities instead of jail. He also got into business with his AA sponsor creating treatment homes in LA. However, that business failed and it ruined his relationship with his sponsor.

How to Build a Sustainable Sober Lifestyle

It’s possible that Perry struggled to remain sober in the years after Friends because he lacked a sustainable, self-protective lifestyle. In Quit Like a Woman, Whitaker recommends setting up a long-term lifestyle that includes:

Finding forms of fun to replace the old, self-destructive forms of fun. To do this, Perry might have leaned into his talent for making people laugh.

Putting yourself first. This would have required Perry to stop trying to constantly please others. For example, he might have invited some of his loved ones to Friends and Family night at the rehab center because it would have been helpful for him to feel their support, even if it made them uncomfortable to go.

Assembling a set of healthy coping strategies. In Perry’s case, deepening his involvement in activism might have been a healthy coping strategy.

A Near-Death Experience

In 2018, he had a major health crisis when his colon ruptured as a result of chronic constipation caused by opioid abuse. He was in rehab at the time, and his best friend and assistant drove him to the hospital as he screamed in pain. At the hospital, he went into a coma and developed pneumonia. He had emergency surgery and was put on an ECMO machine, which performs the jobs of a critically ill person’s heart and lungs so that the organs can rest and recover. His chances of survival were slim at every step, but he beat the odds. He woke up from his coma after two weeks and spent the next five and a half months at UCLA. When he woke up he had a colostomy bag which he continued to have for about a year.

(Shortform note: Opioid-induced constipation is sadly a common struggle for people who rely on opioids, such as cancer patients. For many patients, the discomfort is not worth the benefits of the drugs and they stop their opioid treatments altogether to avoid this side effect.)

At first, he refused to talk about what happened because he was afraid of being responsible for his own near death. When his sister finally explained to him how he ended up in a coma and with a colostomy bag, he again refused to talk about it for weeks. He says he hated himself for putting his own life in danger and putting his family through such a scary time.

How to Start a Conversation With Someone Who Doesn’t Want to Talk

It’s not uncommon for people to react as Perry did and avoid having difficult conversations about tough issues. If you face a situation where you need to talk to someone who is unwilling, you can follow the advice outlined in Crucial Conversations:

• First, it’s helpful to know that if someone doesn’t want to talk about tough issues, it’s usually because they believe it won’t do any good or they don’t feel safe doing so.

• Second, help the person see a compelling reason for having the conversation.

• Then, start the conversation with the least threatening issues. Try to make conversation safe by being alert to when the person becomes uncomfortable and avoiding definitive statements.

However, his family and friends being with him meant a lot to him and it helped him come to terms with inner conflicts he’d had since childhood. He mentions that during the six months of his health crisis, he was never alone, a major fear of his. He was grateful for their loving companionship, especially to his parents. During this time, he got closure with his mother, who stayed with him the entire time he was at the hospital. He finally felt her undivided attention and it helped him come to terms with the loneliness he had felt since childhood. He accepted that she did the best she could as a single, working parent with limited emotional tools.

How Adult Children Can Heal From Parental Emotional Neglect

Although Perry continued to struggle with addiction after this health crisis, the event was still a turning point in his recovery, possibly because of the opportunity it provided to repair his relationship with his mother. In Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, psychologist Lindsey Gibson says that redefining your relationship with an emotionally immature parent can help you heal and move forward from childhood emotional neglect.

To move forward in a healthier way with a parent, you must first see them objectively. This can be challenging because the adult child may desperately want their parent to change, but the unfortunate reality is that most emotionally immature parents lack the tools necessary to have healthy, emotionally connected relationships with their children. Coming to grips with this realization, though painful, enables the adult child to interact with their parent based on the reality of who they are rather than who they wish them to be—better preparing them to manage their limitations when they interact.

Struggling to Recover

After being released from UCLA, he went to New York to continue recovering. He was still using opiates because he convinced his doctors that he was in too much pain, but he admits that he didn’t need the painkillers. Once the doctors realized he was addicted to the oxycontin they were giving him, they sent him to rehab. This led Perry into a series of rehab facilities where he constantly clashed with doctors, lied to get more drugs, and nearly died during a follow-up surgery. During this time he traveled within the US and from the US to Switzerland, unable to find a rehab center that offered the treatments and support he needed.

(Shortform note: Perry’s experience shows the delicate balance doctors must strike when prescribing opioids: They must treat a patient’s pain without creating or exacerbating an addiction. Some sources argue that most people who become addicted to opioids first tried them through a prescription. The 1990s, when Perry’s addiction began, were a period in which opioid prescriptions increased, leading to the first major wave of opioid deaths from 1999 to 2004.)

Perry’s experiences with treatment centers gave him a negative opinion of the industry. He believes they don’t care about the people they allegedly try to help—that they’re interested in taking their money rather than making them healthy. He also argues that at most centers it’s very easy to get access to drugs, which exposes how little they care about their patients.

(Shortform note: Perry’s not alone in his critique of rehab centers. A study found that much of the rehab industry is driven by marketing and sales experts rather than medical doctors or recovery experts. The researchers argue that this leads to rehab centers focusing on extracting as much money as possible from patients and their families, offering spa-like services that don’t contribute to substance abuse recovery. Furthermore, many rehab centers don’t offer medication maintenance treatment, a treatment that allows patients to receive supervised doses of specific drugs so their bodies can sustainably wean off the substances without suffering painful and even fatal withdrawal effects.)

Repeating Patterns in Relationships

In his forties, Perry wanted a serious relationship, but he kept pushing the women who loved him away. At one point, he fell in love with two women at the same time. When he decided to break up with one of them and try to make it work with the other one, his fear of intimacy intensified. To dull the fear, he started doing drugs again until his girlfriend realized what was happening and left him.

He also almost got married a couple of times. He had a girlfriend for several years and decided to ask her to marry him. To do so, he commissioned a painting of the two of them and planned a romantic proposal. But when the time came to ask the question, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. They broke up not long after. Then, during COVID, he proposed to another girlfriend when he was under the influence of drugs because he was afraid to be alone during the pandemic. When he got sober, he realized what he had done and broke up with her.

A Pattern of Avoidance

As we noted earlier, Perry’s patterns are characteristic of avoidant attachers. In Attached, Levine and Heller explain that avoidant attachers employ several techniques to maintain some emotional distance from their partners. These techniques, also known as deactivating strategies, are thoughts or behaviors the avoidant attacher uses to keep their independence in the relationship and avoid getting too close, such as consistently prioritizing alone time over time with their partner. In Perry’s case, those techniques included breaking up before a relationship got serious or favoring casual relationships.

If you’re an avoidant attacher, recognizing and combating your deactivating strategies can help you have a happy relationship. Remember that distancing yourself from your partner may damage the health of your relationship. One strategy Levine and Heller recommend is to second-guess your negative thoughts about your partner: Is it really a problem, or are you trying to push your partner away?

Matthew Today

At 52, Perry has managed to beat some of his unhealthy patterns. This section will discuss his ongoing recovery from addiction and his current outlook on life and the future.

Beating Addiction One Day at a Time

At the time of writing his memoir, after multiple health crises and 14 surgeries, Perry is sober. He claims he quit alcohol and opiates because he got to a point where he needed too many drinks or pills to feel anything. The fear of living with a colostomy bag forever and the fear of dying before learning how to love also helped him quit. Today, he’s on Suboxone, which helps him avoid taking other opiates but makes him depressed.

Medication to Treat Opioid Use

In the same way that addiction has complex causes, being in recovery may require a complex array of supporting mechanisms. Perry’s recovery is supported by his personal commitments (not having a colostomy bag forever and learning to love), his acknowledgment of the limitations of substances in making him feel better, and the use of maintenance medication.

The medication he’s on—Suboxone—is a combination of an opioid (buprenorphine) and an opioid antagonist used to reverse overdoses (Naloxone). It works by attaching itself to the same brain receptors another opioid would attach to. That way, it reduces a person’s craving for drugs because, in essence, there are already drugs in the brain. The maintenance opioid (buprenorphine) prevents the person from seeking dangerous drugs such as heroin or fentanyl, and the opioid antagonist keeps the effect of the maintenance opioid safe.

Of all his addictions, he says quitting cigarettes was the hardest. He was forced to quit when he was diagnosed with emphysema and his doctors told him he would die if he kept smoking. After trying several strategies, he was finally able to quit with hypnosis. (Shortform note: Quitting smoking is difficult for two reasons. First, nicotine, the drug in cigarettes, is highly addictive and makes the brain need it in order to feel at ease. Second, the habit of smoking itself becomes enmeshed in your routine and your daily actions become triggers for smoking. For example, if you always have a cigarette after lunch, lunch becomes a trigger because your brain has been trained to expect the serotonin rush of nicotine at that time.)

However, despite being sober, he argues that addiction is a patient disease—it can wait for the right time to resurface. He believes he can only beat it with the support of his loved ones and by fighting it one day at a time. He also thinks that if he loses his sobriety again, he would likely die since he has such a high tolerance for drugs and alcohol. If he relapsed, he would have to take an enormous amount, which would put his life in immediate danger.

(Shortform note: The fear Perry describes reflects the way opioids act on the body. First, a person develops a tolerance to opioids, which requires them to take more to have the same effect. Then, a person develops opioid dependence when they’re able to function normally with regular opioid use. Finally, addiction means that a person who is dependent on opioids is unable to quit them because of the intense withdrawal symptoms they develop. When a person has been off a drug for a certain amount of time and then relapses, it can be fatal because they’ve lost some of the tolerance to the drug.)

Mature Perry

After decades of struggling, Perry has healed some of his inner conflicts. Despite the ongoing challenges of addiction and recovery, today he is in a good place.

He’s content with his accomplishments. He’s no longer chasing fame because he finally feels that he’s enough. He doesn’t feel the need to prove himself anymore, and he can enjoy the legacy he has already created. He also feels he doesn’t need to be funny all the time to get people to pay attention and like him; he can just be himself.

(Shortform note: Perry’s contentment with the success he’s achieved shouldn’t be confused with complacency. In The 12 Week Year, the authors argue that you become great the moment you prioritize what’s important to create the life you want. Let certain responsibilities go and put your energy into the tasks that have a real impact on your life. In Perry’s case, that means prioritizing his sobriety and letting go of the pressure to maintain fame.)

He’s hopeful about finding love. He regrets not having formed a family and having treated his ex-girlfriends poorly. However, his journey of healing from addiction inspired him to live the rest of his life with love and courage, rather than with fear, which he hopes will help keep him sober and find a woman to love and start a family with.

A Formula for Finding Love at the Right Time

To avoid finding yourself in Perry’s situation—single at an age when you hoped you’d be married—you can follow Logan Ury’s advice in How to Not Die Alone: Explore without committing for the first 37% of your dating life, then commit to the next top pick you see. By following this formula, you won’t miss out on all the good potential partners before they leave the dating pool.

First, find your Exploration Limit Age: [(Age You Want to Get Married - Age You Started Dating) x .37] + (Age You Started Dating). For example, if you want to get married at 28 and you started dating at 18, your exploration limit age would be 21.7. Once you reach your exploration limit age, review your partners and determine which partner you liked the best. (If you’ve already passed that age, review the partners you dated before you reached that age.) Commit to the next person you date whom you like better than your favorite ex-partner.

He’s grateful for having made it this far. Although Perry often questions why he was allowed to live, he is thankful for his renewed chance at life. He describes himself as a seeker of purpose and God’s presence, which he finds whenever he’s helping fellow addicts get better. Writing his memoir is one way to help others who struggle with addiction, as they might learn something from his story and feel less alone in their fights.

(Shortform note: As an addict in recovery, Perry seems to have developed healthy coping mechanisms, called mature mechanisms. In Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, therapist Lori Gottlieb discusses a classic example of mature mechanisms: sublimation, where unhealthy or inappropriate feelings and urges are channeled into something constructive. For example, a man who wants to hurt people could get into boxing. In Perry’s case, helping others overcome their addiction is an act of sublimation, as his work allows him to confront his underlying issues and share his pain in a positive way.)