Goodbye, Friend

I am a huge fan of Friends! My wife, who checked out Matthew Perry's memoir out for me from the Houston Public Library, views it as my nightly lullaby. I have no problem falling asleep without it, but almost every night I do watch a rerun on Nick at Nite. Of course, I have seen every episode multiple times.

I don't think that Fran and I ever watched a live version of the show, which ran for almost ten years (1994-2004). We left New York City in 1994 and never were at all like the six characters or the many guests on Friends. My wife likes it too, though I think she is glad to change the channel when I fall asleep. One of my very close friends when I was in highschool was Lynn Mandel. Lynn, now known as Brown, was a writer for the show! I haven't communicated with her in decades, but I know that she married a famous guy out there, Jay Kogen, and that they have a child, Charlie I just learned that Friends star Lisa Kudrow introduced them!.

Perry's book, published in late 2022, was followed by his death less than a year later. I read it over the last couple of days and learned a lot about Perry that I never knew. To me, he was just Chandler Bing. I liked all of the characters on Friends, but I never knew that much about him in real life. The biggest issue was that he was a full-blown drug addict!

Perry did a good job in this book of explaining how drugs and alcohol controlled his life. He also did a good job of sharing his background and his understanding of the causes of it. He grew up initially in Canada, and he discussed his parents, who married young, had him and then divorced. He remained close to them both for a long time, and he said a lot of good things about each of them in this book.

I enjoyed this book and have a better understanding of Perry now. I have never known people who are close to me that have struggled with the issues he faced as they were facing them, but I have known people that have. It's very hard for me to understand, though clearly addiction is a real issue for humans. It's not just alcohol and drugs, either.

I don't want to ruin the book for anybody who wants to read it, but I want to share some of the things that stood out to me. Here is a list of things about him that I did not know but are interesting:

• His father, John Perry, was the Old Spice guy in the 70s

• He dated Julia Roberts for a while and broke up with her

• He never married or had kids

One of the things that I have learned in life is that people can have fame and money and still be unhappy. Perry was one of these people. He knew that he had a problem with drugs and alcohol, but he struggled to overcome it. I think that we can all learn from the "big terrible thing" in Perry's life.