The news about the death of Matthew Perry At 54 years old he surprised everyone. That is why throughout the last few hours the focus has once again been placed on the networks on the long psychiatric hospitalizations that the protagonist of “Friends” had for several years as a result of his addictions and that he himself told in his autobiography, “Friends, lovers and that terrible thing.”
“I have spent over seven million dollars trying to stay sober. I have been to about 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I’ve been to rehab 15 times. I have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I have been going to therapy twice a week for 30 years. I have been at death’s door.»the actor who immortalized the beloved Chandler revealed in his autobiography.
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Over time, the pressure of the resounding success of Friends consumed him. “When the audience attending live filming didn’t laugh, I wanted to die. And that was not healthy. I already know it. But if I said a sentence and they didn’t laugh, I would start to sweat and have convulsions. If I couldn’t get the laughs I was expecting, I would go crazy. And I felt like that each and every night,” he said in his book.
Thus, as time went by he began to drink alone in his apartment and “the illness became worse.” At the age of 26 he entered a rehabilitation clinic for the first time. “During the years I worked on the series I suffered weight changes that ranged from 58 to 102 kilos. If you pay attention to how I look from season to season, you can follow the trajectory of my addiction: if I gain weight, it’s because of alcohol; If I’m thin, it’s because of the pills. And if I have a beard, it is because I am drinking a lot of them,” he explained.
In a television interview broadcast in October last year, Perry also revealed that at 14 he began to consume alcohol in a worrying manner and that, as an adult, he took 55 pills a day. Furthermore, he confessed that he recorded Friends with high blood alcohol levels and who filmed all the episodes with severe hangovers.
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“Detoxing is hell.”. It involves lying on a bed and watching the seconds go by knowing that you are not even remotely close to feeling better,” she said and added: “Despite this, addiction got the better of me many times”. That is why in his book that became his “memoirs,” he sought to make explicit the ordeal he went through: “I wanted to share it when I was safe from entering the dark side of everything again.”
The autobiography published last year seeks to raise awareness about the importance of mental health. “Addicts are not bad people. We’re just trying to feel better, but we have an illness. When I don’t feel well, I think: ‘Give me something to make it go away.’ As simple as that,” she described.