What Matthew Perry’s Death Tells Us About Living With Addiction

Photo by Ihor Malytskyi on Unsplash

Matthew Perry is almost me. But for the grace of God, as the saying goes.

I didn’t grow up in Canada and star in a mega-zeitgeist TV sitcom in the ’90s; but I grew up in upstate New York (might as well be Canada) and worked in film and TV. He was 54, I’m 48.

I’m not famous, of course, not like him. You’ve probably never heard of me. And by now you’re thinking this is a strange way to begin a piece about a departed actor.

Here’s the thing. I’m an alcoholic, with fourteen years of recovery, and in that way, Matthew Perry and I are the same. Addiction is the great equalizer. If you’re rich you can probably hide it a lot longer, as he did, but it does the same stuff to you. It takes over your life.

I lost fifteen years to alcohol addiction. When I say “lost,” I mean time spent at the bar, or drinking in the shower, going to drunk-driving classes, walking / bicycling to the liquor store in subzero temps because I was no longer allowed to drive, hiding from the world with vicious hangovers, getting sewn up or calmed down in emergency rooms — all when I could have been developing as a person. Your social muscles atrophy with alcoholism; more and more you don’t know how to function without being drunk. The time when other people were going to college, learning a trade…