{"id":623689,"date":"2025-12-10T06:52:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T06:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/623689\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T06:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T06:52:16","slug":"the-hidden-life-of-matthew-perry-he-would-say-i-need-to-stop-and-get-help-matthew-perry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/623689\/","title":{"rendered":"The hidden life of Matthew Perry: \u2018He would say: I need to stop and get help\u2019 | Matthew Perry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watch the third season of Friends, writes Matthew Perry in his memoir, and you can see how thin he had become by the end of it. \u201cOpioids fuck with your appetite, plus they make you vomit constantly,\u201d he writes. Look again, and yes \u2013 his fragile wrists emerge from a shirt that looks as if he has borrowed it from someone far larger, his trousers hang off him \u2013 and it\u2019s unbearably sad now, with the knowledge that addiction would kill Perry nearly 30 years later, at the age of 54. At the time, most people watching probably wouldn\u2019t have noticed, dazzled instead by Perry\u2019s sharpness and immaculate comic timing as Chandler Bing, the show\u2019s dry wit. He was having to take 55 Vicodin pills a day \u2013 an opioid – just to function and avoid terrible withdrawal symptoms, but he was never high while he was working, he writes in Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing<\/a>, which came out in 2022. He just had to make it to the end of the season so he could get help. Had the series lasted for more than its 25 episodes, he thought it would have killed him.<\/p>\n

That was the first time Perry went into rehab. He was 26, and one of the biggest stars in the world. There would be more than 65 attempts to detox from drug and alcohol addiction over the next decades until his death in 2023. Last week, a doctor was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison<\/a> for supplying ketamine in the lead-up to Perry\u2019s death (though not the ketamine that killed him); three others who have pleaded guilty will be sentenced in the coming months.<\/p>\n

The Friends cast in 1994, from left: Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and Matthew Perry. Photograph: Photo 12\/Alamy<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s manager, Doug Chapin, and publicist Lisa Kasteler-Calio had been working with Perry for more than 30 years. After he died, they launched the Matthew Perry<\/a> Foundation, to support addiction treatment and recovery, and campaign to reduce stigma. Perry had long talked about the idea of an organisation doing both. By October 2023, Kasteler-Calio, one of Hollywood\u2019s powerhouse publicists, had already decided to step away from the agency she had co-founded. She texted Perry \u2013 he was a big texter, she says \u2013 to see when he was free so she could go over and tell him in person. He immediately called her. \u201cI was going to continue to work with him on [the foundation] and a few other ideas that he wanted me to be involved in,\u201d she says, when we speak over Zoom, joined by Chapin.<\/p>\n

That was three days before he died. \u201cThe tragedy on top of the tragedy of losing Matthew is that he was ready to do the work,\u201d she says. Chapin says: \u201cHere we were, stopped mid-sentence, so there was nothing except, well, I guess we have to complete this. That was the driving force.\u201d Kasteler-Calio points out that Perry had always said he didn\u2019t want to be remembered for Friends<\/a>, but as someone who had helped others. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have to search for the mission. We had it. He wanted to help as many people as he could, it\u2019s that simple,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Perry in the first series of Friends, 1994. Photograph: NBC\/NBCUniversal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Chapin became Perry\u2019s manager in 1992, and introduced Perry to Kasteler-Calio just before it became clear that Friends \u2013 which launched in 1994 \u2013 would become huge. He was \u201cadorable\u201d, remembers Kasteler-Calio. \u201cI think the reason people fell in love with Chandler is because the real Matthew came through.\u201d Chapin remembers Perry as a young man who didn\u2019t really change over all the decades they knew each other, when he was \u201cwhat he always was \u2013 lovely, smart, funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapin is clear that while Perry craved fame, his struggles pre-dated the pressures it brought (Perry had his first drink at 14). \u201cThe pressures and the demons are not unusual for people who are very talented. I don\u2019t want to make a mass determination, but it\u2019s a particular kind of person that looks to have everybody know them and to be famous.\u201d But fame and attention, he says, \u201camplify the pressure to some degree. More importantly, it made it very hard to have his problems happen in private.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also killed Perry\u2019s fantasy that if only he could become famous, he would feel better about himself. \u201cHe found himself with the number one TV show and the number one movie [The Whole Nine Yards], and, boom, his other struggles still existed,\u201d he says. That wasn\u2019t specific to Perry, he adds. \u201cWhat was specific to Matthew is crazy loyalty,\u201d says Chapin, adding that that is vanishingly rare in Hollywood. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason we worked with him for 30 years. He kept his group of friends close. He kept his representatives close. He inspired loyalty, but he also gave loyalty, that was just one of his characteristics.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want people to think Matthew was a victim of the disease, because he was engaged in trying to recover \u2013 always<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Neither had any idea that Perry was struggling at the beginning. \u201cHe was working so much, he was doing the show and doing a movie in the breaks, there was such intensity of work that I think it masked some of it,\u201d says Chapin. He adds that also, Perry\u2019s addiction \u201cwas not as much of a challenge [then] as it became for him.\u201d Kasteler-Calio says: \u201cMatthew felt a deep sense of responsibility to the other five [on Friends]. He showed up every day and he did the work. He wasn\u2019t somebody who was out in the clubs and all of that.\u201d He was drinking at home, and taking drugs. \u201cBecause this disease is so isolating, he was not publicly, like a lot of others, displaying his disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the seventh season in 2000 \u2013 he had signed the deal in hospital, while being treated for pancreatitis caused by excessive alcohol \u2013 Perry\u2019s castmates were sufficiently worried to take him aside and tell him they knew he had a problem. Chapin and Kasteler-Calio say that Perry was always very open with them. \u201cThere was never the situation like, \u2018Oh, we know something\u2019s happening, but we can\u2019t talk to him about it,\u2019\u201d says Chapin. \u201cHe\u2019d be the person, when it got bad, who would say, \u2018I need to stop and get help.\u2019 I don\u2019t want [people] to have the picture that Matthew was, for lack of a better word, a victim of the disease, because he was engaged in trying to recover, always.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry\u2019s manager Doug Chapin and his publicist Lisa Kasteler-Calio at the Matthew Perry Foundation. Photograph: Eric Charbonneau\/The Matthew Perry Foundation<\/p>\n

But it must have been difficult at times for them to do their jobs, and keep Perry\u2019s career going for him. And there were times, admits Chapin, \u201cwhere the disease collided with the work. I think it\u2019s better that those stories come from [Perry\u2019s] book than from us.\u201d Neither want to dwell on episodes where productions were postponed because Perry wasn\u2019t well \u2013 the 2002 film Serving Sara, or some of his scenes in Friends \u2013 or the times he did show up, such as on the CBS show The Odd Couple, but was unreliable. If Perry\u2019s addiction did make their jobs tricky at times \u2013 and it must have done \u2013 there was no question that the priority was always his health. Kasteler-Calio, still protective, points out that when Perry did have to remove himself from work, on his return to sets he would go around \u201cand apologise to each and every single person\u201d. Many big name actors would not have done that, she adds.<\/p>\n

Although it became the story, Perry\u2019s addiction is far from the whole picture. There were also stretches of sobriety, one of which brought him an Emmy nomination for his role on Friends, and there was the play he wrote and opened in London, the dark comedy The End of Longing, the TV shows he wrote such as the ABC sitcom Mr Sunshine, which he also starred in. \u201cI miss the creative side of him,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cHe was very smart, creatively, and that\u2019s very energising to be around.\u201d Kasteler-Calio misses the way he made her laugh. \u201cThere are just many things, as life happened, that Matthew was a part of. I remember all of that, because that\u2019s where his kindness and the compassion came through.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he was struggling, she says, he didn\u2019t hide it. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t a difficult person. I\u2019ve had plenty of difficult clients. I didn\u2019t have a difficult day with him.\u201d He was not, adds Chapin, \u201ca temperamental guy. He was a lovely, sweet person who had a personal struggle and was always fighting to be the creative, engaged person he loved being, and trying not to succumb to this other thing, this disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry with his publicist Lisa Kasteler-Calio in 2008. Photograph: WENN Rights Ltd\/Alamy<\/p>\n

For Kasteler-Calio, the bigger challenges came from dealing with a media intent on getting stories about Perry \u2013 his struggles were excessively documented \u2013 not from the actor himself. In her five-decade PR career, the celebrity clients \u201cthat were the most challenging when they got into crisis are the ones that didn\u2019t want to listen, that thought they had all the answers. That was not Matthew.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were a couple of pivotal positive moments in Perry\u2019s experience of addiction and attempts to get better. One was the therapist who told him it wasn\u2019t his fault, that it was a disease. \u201cComing to the understanding that he was battling with a chronic illness changed his whole mindset around it,\u201d says Chapin. The other was the publication of his 2022 memoir<\/a> \u2013 funny, self-deprecating and brutal. \u201cHe was always, throughout even his worst times, very helpful and engaged with other people,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cThey would come to him because he had so much experience with the disease [and treatment] that he knew a million avenues to suggest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry in 2008, the year the play he wrote and starred in opened in London. Photograph: David M Benett\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The book was a way to reach people on a massive scale. \u201cIt was the big removing of the Band-Aid of shame, for him,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cIt was a very important step for him. We come back to the stigma and he was always very conscious that the guilt and the shame around [addiction] was part of the struggle. The book was his way of going, \u2018Here I am, everything about me, good, bad and ugly.\u2019 Presenting that out into the world and getting all the love back that he got for it was transformational for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

They had always told him how loved he was, says Kasteler-Calio, but Perry would shrug it off. Now, she says, with audiences coming to hear him speak or the people who wrote to him of their own struggles, \u201cit was right in front of him. You couldn\u2019t deny the impact, and it was Matthew having the impact, not Chandler. As hard as the struggle was for him, conversely, being able to help people was equal to that. That\u2019s why, once we lost him, there was no question that we needed to create this foundation and do this work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tackling stigma is one of its fundamental missions. Only 50% of Americans, says Kasteler-Calio, \u201crecognise that [addiction is] a disease. The rest feel like it\u2019s a moral failing, and that you should just get over it, and that\u2019s not right.\u201d This includes some of the medical profession, she says. \u201cDoctors are not trained in how to treat this disease.\u201d It should be required training for all, not just for specialists, so that any doctor can recognise it, signpost people to the correct treatment \u2013 and be careful with their prescribing.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re doing what Matthew wanted. He said it over and over: I want to help as many people as possible<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perry writes that had he not taken the painkiller one doctor gave him on a film set early in his career, after he had injured himself in a jetski accident, perhaps \u201cnone of the next three decades would have gone the way they did\u201d. Coming out of a two-week coma in 2018 \u2013 the result of a burst colon, followed by pneumonia, caused by the stresses his body had been through \u2013 he was put back on opioids. The foundation works with Dr Sarah Wakeman, an expert in addiction medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and they have established a fellowship in Perry\u2019s name to help train doctors. \u201cOne of the things that is important when we\u2019re talking about this is that recovery is possible, this is a treatable disease,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cThe more skilled we get at treating it, the more we\u2019re going to see examples of recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

A summit held by the foundation in September brought about 200 experts together, along with people and communities with experience of addiction, to build partnerships and share knowledge about everything from treatment to policy. A week later, the foundation was speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, run by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, about the impact of stigma, and how to end it. At the less high-profile end, one of the first things the foundation did was to give money to about 20 grassroots organisations they had identified across California which were helping people with addiction and desperately needed funding. Kasteler-Calio smiles when she said she spent two days on Zoom calls, offering the money and trying to convince people it wasn\u2019t a scam. \u201cWhat people have to go through to apply for grants, it\u2019s expensive, it takes a lot of time. We wanted them to have access to the money immediately,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Matthew Perry\u2019s 2022 autobiography, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Photograph: Hamdi Bendali\/Alamy<\/p>\n

There are employment initiatives to support people in recovery with getting back into work, and the foundation supports Bridge, a project led by doctors that aims to provide joined-up treatment for people with addiction who are leaving prison. \u201cBecause of our experience with Matthew, [we know that] it\u2019s a multi-pronged disease, and you\u2019ve got to hit it from a whole bunch of different directions at once,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cThere is a medical aspect, the psychological aspect. There is also a community aspect to it. People don\u2019t heal from this alone in a room. What we experienced throughout the Matthew experience was that there are all these holes in the process of recovery.\u201d For many trying to recover, \u201cYou can get six weeks of sobriety in a shelter, and then there\u2019s nothing, you\u2019re on the street. There needs to be a wholeness, because the process needs to be sustained for a really long time. What we are looking at is where are the holes that we can fill?\u201d<\/p>\n

Perry, say both, is present in all of this. \u201cThe six months of crying, that happened already,\u201d says Chapin. \u201cThe rest has been working on his project, so he\u2019s still right here with us, every day.\u201d As for his ongoing grief, this is, he says, \u201cthe treatment\u201d. Kasteler-Calio smiles and says, \u201cWe\u2019re doing what Matthew wanted. He said it over and over: I want to help as many people as possible. Of course, we wish we were doing this with him. I miss him like crazy, but the best thing that we can do is just keep doing this work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Watch the third season of Friends, writes Matthew Perry in his memoir, and you can see how thin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-623689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115693954282053300","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}