I had just flown back from Portugal when I read the text. “Kayla, it was so nice meeting you! I’m glad we had an instant connection. I feel like you’re my sister, and family is so important. After what happened to G last night, I’m sure we both feel that now.”
…”what happened to G last night”
I asked my cousin what she meant and she regretfully broke the news that my cousin who lived in Toronto had passed away. Apparently my uncle had phoned abroad and told her, and he’d been trying to reach us too, but we were travelling.
G was just 43-years-old. He had always lived a troubled life, but I was beyond surprised and saddened. I didn’t need to ask, but I did anyway. “was it drugs?” It was. For all of his adult life, G had partied hard. Ultimately, it was a drug laced with fetonyl that took his life. Apparently when he died, his friends panicked. They hoped he was just unconscious, so they waited – and no doubt, hid their own drugs. By the time they called the paramedics hours later, it was too late. G was gone and there was no bringing him back.
His funeral was rough. I watched his parents and brother mourn. I heard furious cries break out from a long-haired man in a leather jacket, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry… I should’ve called. I should’ve called sooner. I’m so sorry.” The guilt was eating him alive. In that moment, I hated him. Some “friend”, I thought. But by the time I got home, I realized he was suffering just as much as G had. And I became angrier at the system we live in which punishes people and scares them away from calling for help when that’s all they need. Society itself isn’t any better either… I remember a few years ago, I told a co-worker that I was catching up with an old friend for coffee. I explained that I was trying to pick a place that wouldn’t have certain temptations nearby since my friend had struggled with alcohol and drugs. My co-worker didn’t skip a beat: “Oh wow, you’re hanging out with a drug-y?” I reminded him that my friend was a person. Going home, I recall feeling disgusted by the judgment.
Needless to say, I was very delighted to recently pick up Matthew Perry’s memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing”. I grew up crushing on Chandler like so many other girls, but I had also learned in recent years that he struggled immensely with addiction. This was bound to be a good read!
Here’s the review… it was a great read, and an awful one. Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room. Perry’s own words make him very, very unlikable. If you spend any time on Goodreads, you likely have seen that many female readers are especially appalled by his book. In it, he frequently talks about being unfaithful to girlfriends and jumping around casually in one friends-with-benefits situation to another. Whenever a woman caught feelings for him, he would swiftly remind her that what she felt was her fault and he would cut her loose. He comes off as arrogant and selfish throughout most of the memoir.
However, Perry also acknowledges later on that he recognizes his desire to push women away came from a fear of commitment. More specifically, he was terrified about commitment ending. He figured that if anyone got too close, it would just be a matter of time before they rejected him. And based on his life story, that fear seems to make some sense.
Perry was born to a Canadian mother and an American father. He travelled between the two countries as an unaccompanied minor on airplanes for a lot of his early childhood. His mother was busy working for the Prime Minister’s office, and he never felt he got the attention he craved from her. When he eventually left Canada to go pursue tennis in the States after ranking nationally, he soon fell into conflict with his father. He explained in the book that Canadian tennis and American tennis are two different beasts. After realizing he wasn’t going to go pro, he switched gears and started acting, but his success seemed to make his father (an actor himself) jealous.
So, Perry’s constant need for approval never seemed to be fulfilled. He prayed for fame and figured that would make everything okay. But as his youth progressed, he got deeper and deeper into alcohol, cigarette smoking, cocaine, and opioid addictions. At his peak, he was taking 55 pills a day. He was constantly in and out of corrupt rehabs that let wealthy people buy drugs – or kicked them out the second they found out they had snuck in some drugs and broke the rules.
As years rolled on, Perry recognized how lonely he was. He describes his deepest regret to be not settling down with one woman and letting his fear of rejection override his potential for true happiness. He also reflects on his early prayers for fame and urges the reader to remember that no amount of money or stardom will bring happiness. He also talks about how drugs got in the way of helping him to develop a true relationship with God. (That perspective was highly interesting for me. I so often hear folks who dabble in drugs talk about how it helps them spiritually, but Perry claims a blockage formed because of his usage.) Perry explains that he couldn’t find joy in seeing a sunset after a while because his body needed larger hits to make him feel that emotion.
All in all, the book was complicated. I would urge anyone who finds him to be annoying or arrogant or sexist to keep reading. Perry, like us all, was a flawed and imperfect human being. But I believe if you look hard enough, there’s a lot to feel compassion for when it comes to his path. And the book itself shines a light on how difficult it is to overcome the “big terrible thing” of addiction. Perry said he wanted to help as many people as possible on that front.
After reading this book, I’ve thought more about G and tried to imagine what could’ve helped him. I know he tried to get clean before. Maybe he needed a better ear around him. Maybe he needed to surround himself with people who didn’t share his struggles. Maybe he needed better mental health support. And maybe he needed to live in a place that didn’t demonize drug users, but remembered their humanity.
On that note, I’d like to leave you all with something I learned recently in a CPR class. In Ontario, Canada, there’s a Good Samaritan Drug Law. Basically, if you have a small amount of illegal drugs on you, but you happen to be present when someone overdoses, you can call 9-1-1, and you can’t be charged for possession. Your act of saving someone’s life trumps the fact that you had some small amount of drugs on your person or property. (To be clear, if you have a larger amount – like a brick of cocaine, you are not exempt, but anything that would just be enough to get you high can be waived.) So, please let this knowledge be your power. Just remember this law exists and if you don’t live in Ontario, but you are a recreational drug user, look up if something similar exists where you are. We all deserve to die with dignity. Nobody should be left waiting for hours because people are scared that they’ll get in trouble when they call for help. And in the day-to-day stuff that is life, let’s try to love each other more and offer help instead of name-calling.