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Matthew Perry: The One Where He Dies · DISGRACELAND

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Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
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Speaker 1: story about Matthew Perry, one of the most beloved television
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Speaker 1: actors of all time, from one of the most celebrated
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Speaker 1: television shows of all time, Friends. But this is also
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Speaker 1: a story about addiction and purpose, about million dollar paydays
0:27
Speaker 1: every week and about nine million dollars spent on fighting
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Speaker 1: an addiction. It's about comas and colostomy bags, and beautiful
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Speaker 1: movie stars and fax machines, crooked doctors, and ketamine queens.
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Speaker 1: It's a story about a man who loved the spotlight
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Speaker 1: like a singer loves a great song or great music.
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Speaker 1: Unlike that music. I've played few at the top of
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Speaker 1: the show that wasn't great music. That was a preset
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Speaker 1: loop from my melotron called Unskinny Tata one. I played
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Speaker 1: you that loop because I can't afford the rights to
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Speaker 1: I'll Make Love to You by Boys to Men. And
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Speaker 1: why would I play you that specific slice.
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Speaker 2: Of number one cheese? Could I afford it?
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Speaker 1: Because that was the number one song in America on
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Speaker 1: September twenty two, nineteen ninety four, and that was the
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Speaker 1: day that Friends aired on national television. Changing Matthew Perry's
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Speaker 1: life Forever On this episode Addiction, Purpose, Fame, Fax, Machines,
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Speaker 1: Akedemy and Queen, and Matthew Perry. I'm Jake Brennan in.
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Speaker 2: This this Disgraceland.
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Speaker 1: There is a weight to silence.
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Speaker 2: It's heavy.
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Speaker 1: Children in the house mean silence is hard to come by,
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Speaker 1: and most parents will tell you that, despite the aggravation,
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Speaker 1: that lack of silence gives them purpose. Someone once said
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Speaker 1: that being a parent with multiple small children is like
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Speaker 1: living amongst endless brushfires, constantly springing to life.
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Speaker 2: It's a game of whack a mole.
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Speaker 1: One fire bursts a light, you put it out, and
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Speaker 1: before you know it, another one springs up. Your job
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Speaker 1: is to not let them get out of control, and
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Speaker 1: conversely to cultivate them when needed. But without that energy,
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Speaker 1: there is only silence. And if you've got a longing
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Speaker 1: in your heart, or an aversion to confronting parts of
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Speaker 1: you that you'd rather not acknowledge, the nasty bits your insecurities,
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Speaker 1: the silence blocks out all logical thought. It sits on you.
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Speaker 1: It's so heavy you can feel your chest start to cave.
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Speaker 1: For Matthew Perry, the silence squeezed him tight until the
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Speaker 1: pressure exploded into a million fragmented, intrusive thoughts, thoughts that
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Speaker 1: then reconstituted back into a massive and amorphous fear. Fear
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Speaker 1: that hit hardest at night, just before the hard to
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Speaker 1: obtain sleep, right during the edge of consciousness, just as
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Speaker 1: Matthew was about to drift off, his fear would pierce
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Speaker 1: the silence and speak to him, sometimes literally, they'll.
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Speaker 2: Never love you, they always.
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Speaker 1: Leave, And sometimes it spoke to him figuratively. The sound
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Speaker 1: of coyotes tearing apart their prey in the distant Hollywood
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Speaker 1: Hills made it inevitable that Matthew Perry wouldn't fall asleep
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Speaker 1: anytime soon. He'd do anything to end this horrific sound.
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Speaker 1: But then what then It was just more silence, and
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Speaker 1: the silence for him was even scarier. Matthew thought about
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Speaker 1: the vicodin on his nightstand, and then he thought about
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Speaker 1: the vodka in his freezer. Then, in a manner of
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Speaker 1: speaking currently influencing the way America spoke, Matthew Perry heard
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Speaker 1: the voice of the character he brought to life on
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Speaker 1: television weekly for millions of people, Chandler Bing. Chandler could
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Speaker 1: always say what Matthew couldn't and Matthew smiled in relief
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Speaker 1: when he heard Chandler break through the fear in his
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Speaker 1: head with that trademark cadence and whip smart wit to say,
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Speaker 1: And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why they invent did
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Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol. All your friends smoke newports. It's a drag.
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Speaker 1: The menthol smell is gross. You need twin blasts of
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Speaker 1: banaka and glade that you keep in your glove box
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Speaker 1: before walking into your kitchen, otherwise your parents will catch wind.
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Speaker 1: And an argument over the friends you're stuck hanging out
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Speaker 1: with will prevent you from watching the friends you want
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Speaker 1: to hang out with Monica.
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Speaker 2: Joey, Phoebe, Rachel.
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Speaker 1: Ross, and Chandler on television. It's Thursday night, nineteen ninety six,
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Speaker 1: a school night, eight pm. You got to be home
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Speaker 1: by now anyway. Otherwise it wasn't just an argument over
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Speaker 1: your friends. It was an argument over your car privileges.
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Speaker 1: But you don't mind. Friends is your favorite show. It's
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Speaker 1: much better than Seinfelder, So you think, what's with that
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Speaker 1: dude's style anyway? Tight jeans and turtlenecks, nap You prefer friends.
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Speaker 1: Life at Central Perk seems lighter than life at Monk's Cafe. Plus,
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Speaker 1: Joey and Chandler and Ross are hot, and Rachel and
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Speaker 1: Monica and Phoebe always look perfect. Your mom even cut
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Speaker 1: her hair like Monica's. But you and nearly everyone else
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Speaker 1: you know with any sense of style cut your hair
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Speaker 1: like Rachel's. Your dad didn't catch the reference. He doesn't
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Speaker 1: care for the show, or so he says. He just
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Speaker 1: sits in his lazy boy reading the nightly edition of
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Speaker 1: the local newspaper while you and your mom watch, though
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Speaker 1: occasionally you'll hear your dad grunt and approval. Whatever Joey
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Speaker 1: lays out his signature, you doing, Ross is about to mess.
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Speaker 2: Up big time.
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Speaker 1: He's way too jealous of Rachel's coworker at Blooming Nails.
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Speaker 2: Blooming Nails.
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Speaker 1: God, a job like that at the mall, can you
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Speaker 1: imagine to die for? You're stuck working at tcby serving
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Speaker 1: the so called country's best yogurt to health conscious housewives
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Speaker 1: and board stoner's from your school.
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Speaker 2: Stoner's love frozen.
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Speaker 1: Yogurt, but you hate it mainly because serving it only
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Speaker 1: pays five bucks an hour, which is likely close to
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Speaker 1: what Phoebe makes as a masseuse.
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Speaker 2: Though she gets tips.
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Speaker 1: Out of the characters on Friends afford those great Manhattan apartments.
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Speaker 1: Your guess is that Monica type A and properly employed
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Speaker 1: as a chef, likely covers most of the rent for
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Speaker 1: hers and Rachel's apartment, and that Ross, of course does
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Speaker 1: alright as a palaeontologist. Joey is an underemployed actor, so
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Speaker 1: it's likely Chandler takes care of his and Joey's rent
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Speaker 1: as a transponster or whatever it is that Chandler does
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Speaker 1: for a living. You wonder if Chandler's job is supposed
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Speaker 1: to be taking a toll on him this season.
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Speaker 2: He's lost a lot of weight.
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Speaker 1: You like skinny guys, though, Patrick Swayze and Dirty Dancing
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Speaker 1: Johnny Depp and cry Baby.
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Speaker 2: Those guys are.
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Speaker 1: Skinny, gorgeous, But Chandler seems so skinny now that you
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Speaker 1: get the vibe that something's wrong, that he hasn't just
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Speaker 1: traded the Ben and Jerry's for the tcby no Chandler
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Speaker 1: bing or the actor that plays him. Rather, Matthew Perry
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Speaker 1: looks ill. Starring on Friends was all Matthew Perry ever wanted. Well.
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Speaker 1: Being famous was actually all Matthew Perry ever wanted, but
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Speaker 1: starring on Friends was how Matthew Perry was going to
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Speaker 1: become famous. Acting out characters on doomed scripts for pilot
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Speaker 1: season every year juiced Matthew's bank account enough to keep
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Speaker 1: the drinks flowing down at the Foremosa Cafe in West
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Speaker 1: Hollywood with his buddies, fellow funny men Hank Azaria and
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Speaker 1: Craig Burko. But fame was not yet a reality, and
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Speaker 1: Matthew needed to make it a reality. He didn't fully
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Speaker 1: understand it at the time, back in those pre fame,
9:00
Speaker 1: pre Friends days in the early nineties, but Matthew Perry
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Speaker 1: needed fame like a junkie needs a fix, like an
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Speaker 1: alcoholic needs a drink. He tasted it briefly acting alongside
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Speaker 1: River Phoenix in the excellent film A Night in the
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Speaker 1: Life of Jimmy Reardon, and got brief snapshots of it
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Speaker 1: from the various sitcom appearances he made in Growing Pains
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Speaker 1: and in Beverly Hills nine O two one zero. The truth, though,
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Speaker 1: is that Matthew had been catching the dopamine rush of
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Speaker 1: adulation every time he'd entered a room since he was
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Speaker 1: fourteen years old. Being the son of an actor, the
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Speaker 1: Old Spice Man himself, John Bennett Perry, and a famous
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Speaker 1: Canadian political pro Suzanne Langford Morrison, press secretary to Canadian
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Speaker 1: Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Matthew needed hum or to stand
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Speaker 1: out amongst his two charismatic and recognizable parents.
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Speaker 2: It worked.
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Speaker 1: People noticed Matthew, everyone but his parents anyway, or so
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Speaker 1: we thought. Their divorce at an early age scarred him.
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Speaker 1: It left him marked by an unshakable sense of abandonment
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Speaker 1: that he used humor to fight it off, to draw
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Speaker 1: people into him, to disarm people socially, and to distract
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Speaker 1: everyone around him from what he thought were his obvious
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Speaker 1: personality flaws. Like every great entertainer, Matthew Perry knew innately
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Speaker 1: and from a young age that when he entered a
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Speaker 1: room he had to make you laugh until your side's hurt,
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Speaker 1: and that when he exited the room, he needed to
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Speaker 1: have the last laugh. Sometimes innate wit wasn't enough. Socially,
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Speaker 1: alcohol helped it, greased the social skits, making the jokes
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Speaker 1: flow with a little less effort. Matthew discovered this as
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Speaker 1: early as fourteen years old, and his drinking persisted throughout
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Speaker 1: the early days of his young acting career, not that
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Speaker 1: that was unusual for a young aspiring actor in Hollywood
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Speaker 1: at the time, everyone had seemed drink and everyone wanted
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Speaker 1: to be famous. When Matthew Perry first read the script
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Speaker 1: for Friends, or for six of One, as the show
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Speaker 1: was initially titled, he knew that the role of Chandler
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Speaker 1: Bing would make him famous. He was Chandler Bing, a
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Speaker 1: character that used humor in sarcasm to mask his vulnerability.
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Speaker 1: Matthew couldn't think of a more accurate portrayal of him
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Speaker 1: as a person, never mind a more perfect role for
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Speaker 1: him to play. He read for the role and he
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Speaker 1: killed it. Then he got down on his knees and
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Speaker 1: prayed to God, saying, God, you can do whatever you
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Speaker 1: want to me, just please make me famous. God listened,
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Speaker 1: God acted. Matthew Perry booked the role of Chandler Bing.
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Speaker 1: Friends aired on September twenty second, nineteen ninety four, and
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Speaker 1: was an instant smash. To say that Friends was a
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Speaker 1: successful TV show is an understatement. We recognize it now
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Speaker 1: as one of the most tcessful television shows of all time,
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Speaker 1: and it was. But if you weren't there in the
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Speaker 1: nineties during its run, especially the breakout hyper fame of
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Speaker 1: those early seasons, it's hard to understand what the show
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Speaker 1: actually was. It's no stretch to call it a cultural phenomenon. Understandably,
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Speaker 1: people compare Friends to Seinfeld, but Friends did things Seinfeld
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Speaker 1: never did. Friends changed the way people dressed. Seinfeld never
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Speaker 1: did that. Friends changed the way people wore their hair.
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Speaker 1: Seinfeld never did that. Friends changed the way people spoke.
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Speaker 1: Seinfeld never did that either. And Friends made massive celebrities
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Speaker 1: out of each of its stars. Seinfeld definitely never did that.
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Speaker 1: The influence of Friends at the time is morrikin to
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Speaker 1: the influence of the Beatles, not of Seinfeld. But by
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Speaker 1: season three of Friends, Matthew Perry realized the full scope
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Speaker 1: of what he had asked of God. Yes, God had
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Speaker 1: made him famous, and yes God was going to do
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Speaker 1: whatever he wanted with him. Fame, Matthew Perry learned, was
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Speaker 1: not enough. It didn't break the silence in his head
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Speaker 1: at night. It didn't call the fear that he wasn't
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Speaker 1: good enough.
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Speaker 2: No one won't ever love you.
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Speaker 1: It opened doors, sure, and yes, Matthew consistently knocked everyone
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Speaker 1: dead with laughs every time he walked through those doors,
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Speaker 1: both on and off stage, but those laughs only went
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Speaker 1: so far. At the end of the day, it was
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Speaker 1: still just Matthew alone with himself and the familiar thought
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Speaker 1: that he wasn't enough. Soon, though, the alcohol wasn't enough either,
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Speaker 1: not enough to keep his demons at bay. So Matthew
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Speaker 1: turned to pills, the opiate's vicotin and soon a tolerance
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Speaker 1: was developed, so much so that by season three of
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Speaker 1: the show that made him fain, Matthew Perry was taking
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Speaker 1: fifty five pills a day to stay high, and when
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Speaker 1: he wasn't chasing lass on stage at the Warner Brothers
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Speaker 1: studio lot, he was chasing down crooked doctors and nurses
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Speaker 1: sympathetic to his faked migraines and TV star charm. Fifty
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Speaker 1: five pills a day had utterly destroyed Matthew's appetite, knocking
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Speaker 1: him down to a deathly looking one hundred and twenty
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Speaker 1: eight pounds. Season three of Friends, Wrapped in the very
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Speaker 1: famous Matthew Perry checked himself into rehab for the first
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Speaker 1: of what would become an eventual sixty five times in
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Speaker 1: detox outside the Hazelt and Betty Ford Drug Treatment Facility
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Speaker 1: in Center City, Minnesota, about ten minutes across Interstate four
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Speaker 1: ninety four is the tiny city of New Hope. There,
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Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety seven, the small paper shop, Hawk's,
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Speaker 1: Hallmark cards, magazines, newspapers, the New Hope Golden Valley Post News,
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Speaker 1: among them, not to mention candy, cigarettes, cigars, and scratch tickets.
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Speaker 1: The magazine stand is one of a million you've seen before.
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Speaker 1: It's filled with late nineties titles, with covers featuring mega
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Speaker 1: famous celebrities, lasting megawatts smiles backup prospective Middle American magazine readers.
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Speaker 1: Behind the glitzy confidence. If you squint, you'll see it,
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Speaker 1: the faint vibe of desperation.
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Speaker 2: It's hard to catch.
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Speaker 1: Most confuse it with vulnerability, and yes, there is vulnerability there,
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Speaker 1: but mostly it's a list desperation. Celebrities appear to be
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Speaker 1: on top of the world with confidence, especially when they're
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Speaker 1: glitzed out on magazine covers under perfect lighting, framed and
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Speaker 1: captured by some of the most talented photographers in the world.
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Speaker 2: But they're there for.
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Speaker 1: A reason because they need your adoration. It feeds them.
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Speaker 1: They need it more than money, some need it more
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Speaker 1: than love. Some even need it more than drugs.
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Speaker 2: It was a jump ball.
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Speaker 1: The question of whether Matthew Perry needed your adoration more
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Speaker 1: than he needed the drugs. Still there he is one
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Speaker 1: of the biggest television stars on the planet. On the
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Speaker 1: cover of Entertainment Weekly with the screaming headline a friend
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Speaker 1: in Need, And there he is. On the cover of People,
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Speaker 1: another headline announces Matthew Perry's addiction crisis. Other magazines seventeen, GQ,
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Speaker 1: and in Style host other cover stars Jennifer Love, Hewitt,
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Speaker 1: Mira Servina, and Helen Hunt, but all feature notices teasing
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Speaker 1: Matthew Perry's recent stint in rehab just up the road
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Speaker 1: from New Hope at Hazelden, where at the moment, Matthew
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Speaker 1: was using the rehab facility's wall for emotional support, standing up,
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Speaker 1: pressing the side of his face into the cold cement,
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Speaker 1: his arms outstretched wide and in a way, pinning himself
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Speaker 1: to the wall in a makeshift hug. Matthew needed the
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Speaker 1: wall to be able to move. Matthew needed the wall
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Speaker 1: for comfort. Matthew needed the wall because it was all
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Speaker 1: he had besides the feeling that he was going to die.
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Speaker 1: The voice told him, so, you'll never live like a
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Speaker 1: real man. Detoxing off of opiates won't kill you like
17:48
Speaker 1: detoxing off of Ben's a dream or alcohol will. But
17:51
Speaker 1: detoxing off of opiates will hurt so bad it'll make
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Speaker 1: you wish you were dead. Opiate abuse and taking fifty
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Speaker 1: five opiate lace pills a day certainly qualifies this abuse
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Speaker 1: will also rewire your brain. It'll confuse your brain so
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Speaker 1: severely that not only will your brain no longer process
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Speaker 1: pleasure and pain the way a healthy brain does, but
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Speaker 1: it'll also take you months, if not an entire year,
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Speaker 1: of solid sobriety before your brain rewires itself back to normal.
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Speaker 1: Matthew Perry was sober, he detoxed and stopped taking vicodin
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Speaker 1: and drinking vodka while in rehab, but he was utterly confused,
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Speaker 1: violently sick, and felt like he was completely alone. Hugging
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Speaker 1: the wall was all he had in Somewhere in his
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Speaker 1: drug addled brain. There was a strange sense of comfort
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Speaker 1: in realizing this. Being alone felt familiar. It seemed inevitable,
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Speaker 1: like the thing he feared the most had finally happened,
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Speaker 1: so he could stop worrying about it now. But then
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Speaker 1: that acknowledgment would get buried.
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Speaker 2: Very capable of joy.
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Speaker 1: And the physical pain of addiction return and once again
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Speaker 1: consumed the twenty eight year old television star. In nineteen
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Speaker 1: seventy six, the British Medical Journal published a study by
19:13
Speaker 1: doctors G.
19:13
Speaker 2: Edwards and M. M.
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Speaker 1: Cross that diagnosed alcoholism as an illness a disease. In
19:21
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, a memorandum published by the World Health
19:24
Speaker 1: Organization broadened the original nineteen seventy six study to include
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Speaker 1: other drugs as well. This meant that medically speaking, if
19:32
Speaker 1: you were an addict, your addiction was a disease, just
19:36
Speaker 1: like any other life threatening disease, like say, cancer or Alzheimer's.
19:41
Speaker 1: This was a massive shift from the prevailing attitude at
19:44
Speaker 1: the time that alcoholism and drug addiction were choices people made.
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Speaker 1: Having grown up in a town full of fellow irishmen
19:52
Speaker 1: and lots of friends of Bill w this classification of
19:55
Speaker 1: addiction as a disease is not news to me. But
19:58
Speaker 1: what is surprising is that to this day people still
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Speaker 1: believe that addiction is a choice. Whenever I post any
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Speaker 1: information on an entertainer that I'm covering who dies of
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Speaker 1: drug abuse or alcoholism, there's always a good portion of
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Speaker 1: the comments damning the addict for their choices in life.
20:16
Speaker 1: Given all that we know, this attitude in twenty twenty
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Speaker 1: four is shocking, not to mention ignorant. That said, it's
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Speaker 1: a mistake that even I've made, despite knowing on an
20:28
Speaker 1: intellectual level anyway, that addiction is a disease. In the past,
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Speaker 1: I falsely believe that loved ones could get clean if
20:37
Speaker 1: they just tried a little harder, as if the deployment
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Speaker 1: of personal effort alone could solve their illness. I'm embarrassed
20:44
Speaker 1: to say that, despite my own deeply personal experiences with addicts,
20:49
Speaker 1: it wasn't until researching this episode that I realized the
20:52
Speaker 1: true nature of opioid addiction and the herculean effort it
20:56
Speaker 1: requires to detox from opiates. Detoxing permanently requires a wide
21:02
Speaker 1: array of tactics beyond willingness and resiliency. Beating the disease,
21:07
Speaker 1: as Matthew Perry was learning during his first stint, and
21:09
Speaker 1: rehab necessitates a mix of not only personal grit, but
21:14
Speaker 1: psychological care, physical therapy, carefully administered medication, time, patience, and
21:20
Speaker 1: lots of love both external and internal. Not to mention
21:25
Speaker 1: luck defeeding the disease of opiate addiction is an insanely
21:29
Speaker 1: steep uphill battle that is different for every addict. Back
21:34
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, you'd be hard pressed to find
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Speaker 1: a doctor, a nurse, or a pain specialist, whatever the
21:40
Speaker 1: hell that is, or a big pharm of sales rep
21:42
Speaker 1: who would tell you that these prescribed opiates were even addictive,
21:46
Speaker 1: when we now know the truth that addiction to these
21:50
Speaker 1: pills to vic it into oxycon wasn't just a bug,
21:54
Speaker 1: it was.
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Speaker 2: Practically a feature.
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Speaker 1: And if, like Matthew Perry, you were genetically predisposed to
22:00
Speaker 1: addiction to the disease, the likelihood that you could stay
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Speaker 1: clean after detoxing was slim to none. Sure there were
22:08
Speaker 1: those who get clean off of opiates, but most need
22:10
Speaker 1: other addictive opiate medication like syboxone methadone to do so.
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Speaker 1: And yes, some people do go cold turkey, but even
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Speaker 1: so sobriety is a daily battle. In the future is unwritten.
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Speaker 1: Matthew Perry's future in nineteen ninety seven was an abstract
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Speaker 1: concept as he propped his body up in the halls
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Speaker 1: of the Hazelden Rehab facility, drool running down his chin,
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Speaker 1: hugging the wall. Once again, strange sounds rattled around his head,
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Speaker 1: coyotes and children, and the clunky, half mechanical, half digital
22:46
Speaker 1: sound of something exciting shaking itself to life, a memory
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Speaker 1: of a new hope.
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Speaker 2: Are you right back after this?
23:01
Speaker 1: We're we're where? Before email, before cell phones, long before
23:12
Speaker 1: social media, fax machines were used to transmit the written
23:16
Speaker 1: word over long distances. Matthew Perry's fax machine was working
23:21
Speaker 1: overtime lately in these heady early days of friends. Million
23:26
Speaker 1: dollar offers for starring roles in films mostly, but that
23:30
Speaker 1: wasn't what had Matthew figuratively chained to his fax machine.
23:34
Speaker 1: Now we'll cause Matthew to not go too far from
23:37
Speaker 1: his facts and to race home after work to check
23:40
Speaker 1: its messages. Was a long distance flirtation Matthew had going
23:44
Speaker 1: on with the biggest movie star on the planet, Julia
23:47
Speaker 1: Roberts poems Get to Know Your Missives, and conversations about
23:52
Speaker 1: their shared love of the La Kings. Conversations that started
23:56
Speaker 1: professionally progressed quickly to personal and then romantic, consumed Matthew's imagination.
24:04
Speaker 1: Soon Julia rapt production on Woody Allen's Everyone Says I
24:08
Speaker 1: Love You returned to the States, and she and Matthew
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Speaker 1: started dating each other. It was perfect, so it had
24:15
Speaker 1: to end. Matthew Perry couldn't handle a perfect relationship with
24:21
Speaker 1: the perfect woman whose love should have perfectly suited him,
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Speaker 1: because Matthew Perry knew in his bones that he was
24:27
Speaker 1: far from perfect, and that someday Julia Roberts would realize
24:31
Speaker 1: this and she would leave him for it, and that
24:33
Speaker 1: pain would hurt worse than him leaving her now, So
24:37
Speaker 1: Matthew Perry broke up with the biggest movie star on
24:40
Speaker 1: the planet, who wanted nothing more than to be with him,
24:42
Speaker 1: to take care of him, and to share a future
24:44
Speaker 1: with him. Matthew's future was not to be shared with
24:48
Speaker 1: anyone or anything except for what he called the big
24:52
Speaker 1: terrible thing, which was his consuming drug habit. The fact
24:57
Speaker 1: that Matthew had the number one television show in the
24:59
Speaker 1: world at the same time that he had the number
25:01
Speaker 1: one movie, The Whole Nine Yards, starring alongside the coolest
25:05
Speaker 1: dude Matthew had ever met, Bruce Willis, none of this
25:08
Speaker 1: changed Matthew's relationship with drugs and alcohol. If anything, the
25:14
Speaker 1: busier or more successful, the more famous Matthew cut, the
25:18
Speaker 1: deeper he sunk into addiction.
25:21
Speaker 2: Hazelden worked in.
25:22
Speaker 1: Cleaning him up for a moment anyway, and then there
25:25
Speaker 1: was a slip up. Then there was methadone to suppress
25:28
Speaker 1: the all consuming need for opiates. Matthew never showed up
25:32
Speaker 1: high to work on the set of Friends, but he
25:34
Speaker 1: was constantly hungover xanax, cocaine, the nightly Court of vodka.
25:40
Speaker 1: The hangovers were intense until the lights went on and
25:42
Speaker 1: the director yelled to action. Most times Matthew could summon
25:47
Speaker 1: the strength to overcome the physical and mental pain, hit
25:50
Speaker 1: his mark and deliver his line as Chandler Bing, But
25:53
Speaker 1: once the director yelled cut, Matthew would sink back into
25:57
Speaker 1: the prickly embrace the big terrible thing. Jennifer Aniston confronted him.
26:04
Speaker 1: Matthew's sense of professional pride kicked in, and another trip
26:08
Speaker 1: to rehab after Friends wrapped was booked. Once Matthew checked in,
26:12
Speaker 1: the effectiveness of rehab was now being challenged by an
26:15
Speaker 1: attic whose disease compelled him to manipulate the rules to
26:18
Speaker 1: find and use more drugs. It was a vicious predicament.
26:22
Speaker 1: Eventually Matthew was discharged, but in short order he started
26:26
Speaker 1: getting high again, and just as friends soared to new
26:29
Speaker 1: heights and popularity, Matthew once again crashed. Central Perk was
26:38
Speaker 1: one of those local coffee shops that no longer exists.
26:42
Speaker 1: These days, coffee shops are about corporate efficiency and are
26:45
Speaker 1: run by corporate overlords. Order online to save time, storm
26:50
Speaker 1: into the shop with earbuds on, ignore conversation with any
26:52
Speaker 1: other customers less they slow down your commute, and be
26:55
Speaker 1: lined to a special online takeout counter. Pick up your order, perhaps,
26:59
Speaker 1: grunt to the coffee shop worker behind the counter, and
27:02
Speaker 1: get out of there and out on the street with
27:03
Speaker 1: your earbuds. Back in and off to work, so you
27:05
Speaker 1: could ignore a bunch of different people and slave away
27:08
Speaker 1: at your job for your very own corporate overlords. Or
27:13
Speaker 1: if you're say unemployed or underemployed, or want to connect
27:17
Speaker 1: with an old friend, you hit the coffee shops. Stand
27:19
Speaker 1: in a different line, one where you order in person,
27:21
Speaker 1: catch some attitude from the worker for not ordering online. Wait,
27:24
Speaker 1: grab your coffee, and you sit in hard What are
27:27
Speaker 1: those seats made out of anyway? For Micah plastic, whatever
27:30
Speaker 1: they are, they are intentionally uncomfortable seats because mister corporate
27:33
Speaker 1: coffee doesn't want your underemployed ass hanging out in his
27:35
Speaker 1: coffee shop for too long because he needs to service
27:38
Speaker 1: new customers with new money. Coffee shops weren't always like this,
27:43
Speaker 1: and sure a few of the old local shops still
27:46
Speaker 1: exist somewhere, I guess, but they're the minority shops that
27:49
Speaker 1: encourage just hanging around.
27:53
Speaker 2: But that's what coffee shops were like in the nineties.
27:55
Speaker 1: Coffee came into these big, massive cups that would more
27:58
Speaker 1: often than not get reft for free. The seating was
28:01
Speaker 1: even bigger, puffy or huge shabby sheet furniture purchased in
28:04
Speaker 1: thrift shops and good wills that seemed to invite you
28:07
Speaker 1: to take a load off, get comfy, and hang out
28:09
Speaker 1: with your friends as long as you like. The snacks
28:12
Speaker 1: were far from health conscious like they are today. They
28:15
Speaker 1: were loaded with sugar that would eventually make you sleepy
28:17
Speaker 1: and cause you to sink deeper into the big puffy
28:20
Speaker 1: chair you were sitting in. This is what Central Perk
28:24
Speaker 1: was like, the fictional coffee shop from Friends where Matthew
28:28
Speaker 1: Perry and his cast mates were currently sitting filming a scene.
28:33
Speaker 1: Though it wasn't sugar causing Matthew to sink into his chair.
28:36
Speaker 1: It was his hangover. Matt LeBlanc, the actor who played Joey,
28:42
Speaker 1: was the only one who caught it, and thank god,
28:44
Speaker 1: he caught it quickly. Matthew's line was coming up, and
28:47
Speaker 1: it was a big one, one of those scene ending
28:50
Speaker 1: side splitting lines meant to punctuate the story with laughter.
28:53
Speaker 1: But there Matthew was. Matt saw it. Matthew was nodding off,
28:59
Speaker 1: literally falling as sleep during the filming of the scene
29:01
Speaker 1: in front of a live studio audience. Matt leblank quickly
29:05
Speaker 1: nudged him, and Matthew came too quickly, so quickly that
29:08
Speaker 1: no one had seen him not off, and just in
29:11
Speaker 1: time for him to deliver the line. That night, at home,
29:16
Speaker 1: Matthew buried this awful memory with vodka. Then he felt
29:20
Speaker 1: something twisted in his side. This was not an ordinary pain.
29:25
Speaker 1: This was unlike anything he'd ever felt in his thirty
29:27
Speaker 1: years on this planet. Something was deeply wrong. Matthew was
29:32
Speaker 1: rushed to the emergency room, where he was informed by
29:35
Speaker 1: the attending doctor that he had a cute pancreatitis set
29:38
Speaker 1: just thirty years old from drinking massive amounts of alcohol.
29:43
Speaker 1: The pain was so severe that Matthew was kept in
29:46
Speaker 1: the hospital for thirty days and nights and administer dilauded
29:50
Speaker 1: for the pain. Dilauded as an opiate that Matthew Perry,
29:53
Speaker 1: despite the accommodations, was now a very happy man. This
29:58
Speaker 1: drug not only handled the pain in his stomach, it
30:01
Speaker 1: changed his relationship with pain. It rewired his brain. It
30:05
Speaker 1: gave him a false sense of pleasure, of happiness. But
30:09
Speaker 1: what was happiness really? Wasn't it all just relative? At
30:14
Speaker 1: the moment, Matthew didn't need anything yet a bed, a TV,
30:19
Speaker 1: and a constant supply of drugs. He also had the
30:22
Speaker 1: highest paying job in television waiting for him when he
30:25
Speaker 1: eventually got out of the hospital. When Friends started out,
30:31
Speaker 1: David Schwimmer, the actor who played Ross, was the show's
30:35
Speaker 1: biggest star in terms of who the audience showed up
30:38
Speaker 1: to see each week. David Shwimmer had the genius idea
30:41
Speaker 1: early on in the show's run that no cast member,
30:44
Speaker 1: not even himself, who was the only one at the
30:46
Speaker 1: time in the position to do so, should make more
30:49
Speaker 1: money than any other cast member. He presented this idea
30:53
Speaker 1: to Courtney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, matt LeBlanc, Lisa Coudro, and
30:56
Speaker 1: Matthew Perry, who all of course thought it was a great.
30:59
Speaker 2: Idea, and why wouldn't they.
31:01
Speaker 1: David was the only one who could have commanded astronomical money,
31:04
Speaker 1: so whatever the suits at NBC needed to pony up
31:06
Speaker 1: to keep David happy, that was the same amount of
31:09
Speaker 1: money they were going to have to pony up for
31:10
Speaker 1: all of David's.
31:11
Speaker 2: Co stars as well.
31:13
Speaker 1: David did this because he didn't want the hassle of
31:15
Speaker 1: constant salary fights between the studio and the show's six stars.
31:20
Speaker 1: David knew the studio would pit each of them against
31:22
Speaker 1: each other, and that inevitably certain stars would fall out
31:25
Speaker 1: over salary beefs that need to be replaced, and the
31:28
Speaker 1: creative chemistry of the show would risk significant disruption. It
31:32
Speaker 1: was a genius idea on David's part, especially as the
31:35
Speaker 1: show grew in popularity, each of the star's own popularity grew,
31:40
Speaker 1: some of whom eventually surpassed David himself in popularity, Jennifer
31:44
Speaker 1: Aniston being one, Matthew Perry was not one. Matthew was
31:48
Speaker 1: a massive star, sure, but no one on the show
31:51
Speaker 1: was as big as Jennifer Aniston. As Friends entered the
31:53
Speaker 1: new millennium, Jennifer could have commanded a much bigger salary,
31:58
Speaker 1: but she didn't.
32:00
Speaker 2: Every movie studio in Hollywood.
32:01
Speaker 1: Wanted to put her in their movies and was willing
32:03
Speaker 1: to back up the money truck to make it happen.
32:05
Speaker 1: So NBC needed a big enough payday for Jennifer Aniston
32:08
Speaker 1: to keep her happy and on Friends. And because of
32:11
Speaker 1: the deal the Friend stars made back in the first
32:13
Speaker 1: season with David Swimmer, NBC now had to back up
32:17
Speaker 1: the money truck for all of the co stars on Friends,
32:19
Speaker 1: not just Jennifer Aniston, and of course Matthew Perry included,
32:23
Speaker 1: who was now in his hospital room, hooked up to
32:26
Speaker 1: a dilauded IV high as a kite as he signed
32:30
Speaker 1: his new employment contract, the one that paid him just
32:33
Speaker 1: as it did his five co stars, one million dollars
32:36
Speaker 1: per episode, essentially one million dollars per week, one million
32:41
Speaker 1: dollars times twenty four episodes for the next season, and
32:45
Speaker 1: one million dollars for eighteen episodes for the final season
32:49
Speaker 1: forty two million dollars. Matthew Perry was about to be
32:53
Speaker 1: discharged from the hospital as a very, very rich man,
32:57
Speaker 1: and he was also about to be discharged from the
32:59
Speaker 1: hospital with an even stronger addiction to opiates than he
33:02
Speaker 1: had when he went in. Matthew Perry's luxury car screamed
33:29
Speaker 1: down the road, with Matthew curled up in a ball
33:31
Speaker 1: and the passenger seved and screaming in agony. His assistant
33:35
Speaker 1: had one hand on the wheel and another pinning her
33:37
Speaker 1: cellphone to her face. She was also screaming.
33:41
Speaker 2: High profile coming into er high profile. Matthew's pain in.
33:46
Speaker 1: His stomach was so severe that the tiniest bump in
33:49
Speaker 1: the road sent shocks of agony up his spine. Once
33:53
Speaker 1: at the emergency room, Matthew was quickly hoisted onto a
33:56
Speaker 1: wheel gurney get ready to run, One of the nurses
34:00
Speaker 1: said to his assistant. Matthew was strapped in and the
34:03
Speaker 1: nurses sprinted him towards surgery. That's when Matthew Perry slipped
34:08
Speaker 1: into the coma. It was just before his colon exploded.
34:13
Speaker 1: Then he aspirated into his breathing tube and proceeded to
34:17
Speaker 1: vomit ten days of toxic feces into his lungs. Two
34:25
Speaker 1: weeks later, Matthew came out of the coma. It was
34:29
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen Friends had long since ended in two thousand
34:33
Speaker 1: and four. Matthew had navigated around his disease to work
34:37
Speaker 1: in various film, television, and stage productions, some successful, some not,
34:41
Speaker 1: but the end result was that Matthew's addiction prevented him
34:45
Speaker 1: from adequately managing the type of career that a celebrity
34:48
Speaker 1: of his stature is inclined to maintain. Matthew's personal life
34:52
Speaker 1: post friends fared no better in the end. With every
34:56
Speaker 1: one of his girlfriends, whether Lauren Graham or Lizzie Kaplan,
34:59
Speaker 1: the woman he should have married, or any of the
35:01
Speaker 1: long line of beautiful women he dated both seriously and casually,
35:05
Speaker 1: had always came down to the same thing. Matthew would
35:08
Speaker 1: end the relationship before fully committing, as a means of
35:11
Speaker 1: protecting himself from the inevitable pain he feared he would
35:14
Speaker 1: suffer when these women would eventually find out who he
35:17
Speaker 1: actually was and inevitably leave him. They'll never love you,
35:23
Speaker 1: they always leave. Matthew had to leave first. Matthew's personal
35:29
Speaker 1: life mostly devolved into an impersonal network of personal assistants,
35:34
Speaker 1: sober companions, crooked doctors and nurses who would prescribe him
35:38
Speaker 1: drugs and skeevie drug dealers, not that he didn't have
35:42
Speaker 1: those around him who loved him.
35:44
Speaker 2: He did.
35:45
Speaker 1: His co stars from friends stayed in contact, and his parents,
35:49
Speaker 1: his mother and his father and his stepfather, as well
35:52
Speaker 1: as his siblings all did their best to support him
35:54
Speaker 1: when Matthew allowed, and their help certainly inspired Matthew's intermittent sobriety.
36:01
Speaker 1: But the drugs and alcohol took a real toll. Matthew
36:05
Speaker 1: not only suffered a coma, but the CPR process left
36:08
Speaker 1: him with eight broken ribs, He lost teeth or a
36:12
Speaker 1: colostomy back and ended up on life support. Then the
36:16
Speaker 1: pain was immense, both real and imagined, so Matthew tried
36:22
Speaker 1: burying the pain with more drugs, and this resulted in
36:25
Speaker 1: more rehabstance. In twenty twenty, in a Swiss rehab, Matthew's
36:32
Speaker 1: pain was being treated with daily ketamine infusions. Matthew loved
36:37
Speaker 1: the high. He said it was like getting hit in
36:39
Speaker 1: the head with the happy shovel, but it wasn't enough,
36:42
Speaker 1: so he faked the pain to get more drugs, and
36:46
Speaker 1: during this time Matthew needed another surgery. The doctors administered propofol,
36:52
Speaker 1: the drug that killed Michael Jackson. Matthew's heart stopped for
36:56
Speaker 1: a full five minutes. He was clinically dead, but miraculously
37:01
Speaker 1: was revived and survived. After surgery, Matthew spent one hundred
37:05
Speaker 1: and seventy five thousand dollars to fly to Los Angeles
37:08
Speaker 1: to get the drugs he couldn't get in Switzerland. When
37:10
Speaker 1: he was refused the drugs in Los Angeles, he spent
37:13
Speaker 1: another one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to fly
37:16
Speaker 1: back to Switzerland to take.
37:18
Speaker 2: What they would give him.
37:20
Speaker 1: Matthew himself, in his twenty twenty two autobiography, estimated that
37:25
Speaker 1: he had spent nine million dollars in total on his
37:28
Speaker 1: addiction over the years, fifteen rehabstance, fourteen surgeries, therapy two
37:35
Speaker 1: times a week, and over six thousand AA meetings. Perhaps
37:40
Speaker 1: the AA meetings inspired Matthew to finally get cleaned for good.
37:43
Speaker 1: At the start of the twenty twenties, there were those
37:48
Speaker 1: who believe, and I happen to be one of them,
37:51
Speaker 1: that good and evil are very real concepts. The dividing
37:55
Speaker 1: line is free will. We have free will to choose
37:58
Speaker 1: between good and evil. Most of us, anyway, addicts are
38:02
Speaker 1: responsible for their choices, certainly, but for those with the disease,
38:06
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as making a choice to get
38:08
Speaker 1: clean and sticking to it. Most attics are good people
38:12
Speaker 1: who do not want to be addicted. It's the evil
38:15
Speaker 1: of the drug. It's the evil of the drug dealers.
38:18
Speaker 1: It's the evil of the predatory doctors and pharma shareholders
38:22
Speaker 1: that so forcefully challenged the addicts free will. Matthew Perry
38:27
Speaker 1: had the will to get clean. He found God, and
38:31
Speaker 1: God spoke to him in a rare moment of clarity. God,
38:35
Speaker 1: by Matthew Perry's own estimation, as detailed in his autobiography,
38:38
Speaker 1: gave him purpose in life. And that purpose wasn't to
38:42
Speaker 1: be a father or a husband, as Matthew always desired.
38:46
Speaker 1: That purpose was to get clean and to use his
38:49
Speaker 1: experience with addiction to help others get clean, which he
38:52
Speaker 1: did even before Matthew had cleaned himself up. He converted
38:57
Speaker 1: his home in Malibu into a treatment facility called Perry
39:00
Speaker 1: House to help attics. Beyond Perry House, Matthew helped his
39:04
Speaker 1: old drinking buddy Hank Azaria, get clean. He helped strangers
39:08
Speaker 1: who approached him on the street get sober. He used
39:11
Speaker 1: his celebrity to advocate against the overincarceration of drug offenders,
39:15
Speaker 1: testifying before a House subcommittee. He regularly spoke at treatment centers,
39:20
Speaker 1: he spoke at a conference to hundreds of thousands of
39:22
Speaker 1: people over the course of one weekend, and he publicly
39:25
Speaker 1: put his own troubled experiences front and center in his
39:29
Speaker 1: later years in an effort to remove the stigma around addiction.
39:33
Speaker 1: Matthew's goal in life was no longer to be famous.
39:37
Speaker 1: He'd achieved that, and what he found was nothing. Fame
39:42
Speaker 1: is hollow. It doesn't fulfill you, it eats you once achieved.
39:47
Speaker 1: And given that I'm not famous, I can hardly understand this.
39:51
Speaker 1: But I've researched enough entertainers to grasp a deeper understanding
39:53
Speaker 1: of it. Once achieved, fame is more of a burden
39:57
Speaker 1: than an asset. That seems to be the party line
40:00
Speaker 1: from every entertainer. The ones who are properly grounded are
40:03
Speaker 1: the ones who deal with it best. The ones who
40:06
Speaker 1: have psychological childhood trauma and addictive personalities like Matthew Perry,
40:10
Speaker 1: fame does more harm than good. When auditioning for friends,
40:15
Speaker 1: Matthew Perry got down on his knees and prayed to God,
40:19
Speaker 1: saying to him, God, you can do whatever you want
40:22
Speaker 1: to me, just please make me famous. And God answered
40:27
Speaker 1: Matthew's prayers. He made him famous, and that fame fed
40:31
Speaker 1: his addiction, and that addiction nearly destroyed Matthew Perry on
40:35
Speaker 1: numerous occasions. That destruction put Matthew in a position where
40:40
Speaker 1: the only way to survive was to find real purpose,
40:43
Speaker 1: not fame as he hoped, but a purpose in life,
40:47
Speaker 1: one that would give him a new hope, the new
40:49
Speaker 1: found purpose of helping others. In Matthew's position with his celebrity,
40:55
Speaker 1: that men helping hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.
40:59
Speaker 1: Maybe not as many pe people as Matthew made laugh
41:01
Speaker 1: during his stint on Friends, But what's more important, buzzy
41:05
Speaker 1: one liners from Chandler BNG were saving people's lives from
41:09
Speaker 1: the evils of drugs and alcohol. God did indeed do
41:13
Speaker 1: what he wanted with Matthew Perry. He wanted Matthew Perry
41:17
Speaker 1: to help.
41:17
Speaker 2: People with his life.
41:19
Speaker 1: The question remains, how many people will Matthew Perry's story
41:24
Speaker 1: help now that he's dead. Hold on, this story isn't over.
41:33
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about bad habits in this episode,
41:36
Speaker 1: and I too have bad habits, not anywhere near Matthew
41:39
Speaker 1: Perry's bad habits, but I do have the toxic habit
41:42
Speaker 1: of sometimes checking Instagram first thing in the morning when
41:44
Speaker 1: I wake up. A couple of weeks ago, bleary eyed,
41:48
Speaker 1: before my first espresso in the morning, I scrolled across
41:50
Speaker 1: an Instagram post suggesting that Matthew Perry was murdered. I
41:55
Speaker 1: was groggy, disassociated. I've been awake only seconds. My stomach
42:01
Speaker 1: if for the past week, I'd been deep into researching
42:03
Speaker 1: Matthew Perry and more specifically the life he lived that
42:06
Speaker 1: led to his overdose and death on October twenty eighth,
42:09
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Chandler Bing was living rent free in
42:13
Speaker 1: my head at the moment, and the idea that he
42:16
Speaker 1: was murdered, though, was shocking, but knowing what I'd recently learned,
42:20
Speaker 1: it didn't seem outlandish in the least. If one was
42:24
Speaker 1: going to get away with murdering a celebrity in twenty
42:26
Speaker 1: twenty three, a murderer would be hard pressed to find
42:29
Speaker 1: an easier victim than Matthew Perry. During his final days,
42:33
Speaker 1: Matthew had been back on drugs, subjecting himself to the
42:36
Speaker 1: glorious high of the Happy shovel, and undergoing legally administered
42:40
Speaker 1: ketamine infusions to treat his depression and anxiety. The ketemie
42:44
Speaker 1: Matthew had been legally administered would have worn off by
42:47
Speaker 1: the time he died, and with the amount of ketamine
42:49
Speaker 1: in his system, authorities believed he had been obtaining ketamine
42:52
Speaker 1: illegally from a street source, and there was no murder,
42:56
Speaker 1: just clickbait sort of. On August sixteenth, twenty twenty four,
43:03
Speaker 1: the US Attorney's Office announced in a press conference that
43:06
Speaker 1: was nationally broadcast live on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News
43:10
Speaker 1: that five people have been arrested and charged in connection
43:13
Speaker 1: with the death of Matthew Perry. Two street dealers, Eric
43:17
Speaker 1: Fleming and another known as the Ketamine Queen, Jazvine Sanga,
43:21
Speaker 1: along with two doctors, Salvador Placentia and Mark Chavez, and
43:25
Speaker 1: Matthew's live in personal assistant, Kenneth Awamasa. And the five
43:30
Speaker 1: were charged with a mix of distribution, possession, and records
43:33
Speaker 1: falsification charges, but none with manslaughter or murder. Three of
43:38
Speaker 1: the five have already reached plea agreements. Doctor Placentia has
43:42
Speaker 1: pleaded not guilty. Text messages reveal that Placentia was actively
43:46
Speaker 1: praying on Matthew Perry's addiction, saying about Matthew and a
43:50
Speaker 1: message to one of his alleged co conspirators about the
43:52
Speaker 1: ketemine that doctor Placentia was selling to Matthew Perry quote,
43:56
Speaker 1: let's see how much this moron will pay un quote.
44:00
Speaker 1: I remind you that text came from a doctor illegally
44:05
Speaker 1: selling prescribed drugs on the street.
44:08
Speaker 2: Evil.
44:11
Speaker 1: In the end, it was too much for Matthew Perry, who,
44:15
Speaker 1: on that day in late October twenty twenty three, took
44:18
Speaker 1: his illegal dose of ketamine, then slipped into his hot
44:21
Speaker 1: tub in his backyard overlooking the Pacific Ocean. He was
44:25
Speaker 1: found the next morning floating face down in the water.
44:29
Speaker 1: He drowned after the powerful effects of the ketemie caused
44:32
Speaker 1: him to slip underwater unconscious. And there were no kids
44:37
Speaker 1: in the distance laughing, no coyotes, not even any scary voices,
44:42
Speaker 1: no fear, no pain, and no one for Matthew Perry
44:46
Speaker 1: to leave before they broke his heart and left him.
44:50
Speaker 1: Because Matthew Perry had just left for good.
44:55
Speaker 3: I'm Jake Brennan and this this Disgrace Lam.
45:11
Speaker 1: All right, that was a sad one, guys, I'm going
45:14
Speaker 1: to focus on something a little less emotional for this
45:16
Speaker 1: week's question of the week. We did a friends in
45:18
Speaker 1: Seinfeld comparison in this episode.
45:20
Speaker 2: I'm actually more of.
45:21
Speaker 1: A Seinfeld guide despite the way I laid up the
45:23
Speaker 1: two shows in this story.
45:24
Speaker 2: But that exercise prompted me to want to ask you.
45:27
Speaker 1: Guys, what is the greatest television show of all time?
45:31
Speaker 2: And why? Lots of great shows to choose.
45:34
Speaker 1: From, but you can only choose one six one seven
45:38
Speaker 1: nine oh six six six three eight. Leave me a voicemail,
45:40
Speaker 1: send me a text and let me know. You can
45:42
Speaker 1: also reach me at disgrace lampod as well on Instagram,
45:45
Speaker 1: X and Facebook. I'm gonna be sharing your answers on
45:47
Speaker 1: the after party bonus episode that's coming up next. Leave
45:50
Speaker 1: a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
45:53
Speaker 1: and win some free merch. All right, here come some credits.
45:58
Speaker 1: Disgrace Slam was created by Yours Truly and is produced
46:01
Speaker 1: in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can
46:04
Speaker 1: be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod.
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Speaker 2: Dot com.
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Speaker 2: He then