Jerry Davich
A woman wearing a costume of a Dos Equis beer bottle last Saturday approached me at a Halloween party.
“Matthew Perry died,” she said somberly.
How appropriate that I heard the news from a bottle of booze, I thought. Perry struggled for most of his life with drinking and addiction problems. The talented but troubled actor was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his house.
Police said no foul play was involved. The Los Angeles County coroner has deferred the investigation to determine a cause of death, which may take weeks. Toxicology tests will determine what, if anything, was in Perry’s body.
It doesn’t matter to me how he died. It’s a miracle he lived to 54. He abused his body for much of his life. He said this publicly many times.
“Alcoholism and addiction took over decades of my life,” Perry said in one interview.
I admired him more for his candid feelings about his off-screen demons than I did for his on-screen performance as Chandler Bing in the mega-popular TV show “Friends.” Along with millions of other fans, I loved that show and I laughed at his character’s sarcastic one liners, which echoed the edgy sense of humor of my big brother, Joe.
Perry always reminded me of Joe, who also struggled with drinking and addiction problems. Alcoholism and addiction took over decades of his life, just like with Perry. Joe started drinking alcohol as a teenager, just like Perry. Joe wasted ridiculous amounts of money to feed his addictions, just like Perry. And Joe died prematurely, just like Perry.
“Taking all those drugs, and it was a lot of drugs, was just a futile attempt to feel better,” Perry wrote in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”
My brother also took a lot of drugs in a futile attempt to feel better. He looked for relief in the bottom of hundreds of beer, wine and liquor bottles. He tried just about every illegal substance you can think of. He pawned stuff to feed his addiction. He sold his soul to get the next fix.
Joe’s preferred pain killer was painkillers, just like with Perry, who at one point was downing 55 Vicodins a day during his “Friends” days. Joe also downed dozens of pills a day, if he had them. For one of his birthdays later in life, I gave him a plastic baggie filled with assorted pills from my medicine cabinet.
“Happy Birthday!” I wrote on a note.
I had no idea what the pills were originally prescribed for. He could identify them like a pharmacist. It may have been the best gift I ever gave him. That baggie was empty by nightfall.
I deliberated about giving him such a “gift.” Was I an enabler or a brother? Both at times. Neither at times. We had a love-hate relationship. I loved him. I hated his addiction. It was very difficult for my family to differentiate our feelings to both entities. My poor mother did everything possible to unconditionally love and protect Joe despite his addiction. And despite how he abused her.
This is what angered me most about my brother’s addiction, and his actions to satisfy it.
At heart, Joe was a kind and generous soul. He would buy gifts for his nieces and nephew. He would bring me doughnuts and a newspaper every morning, dropping them off in my mailbox before I woke up.
He often woke very early to get his first fix of the day. Later in his life it was methadone, an oral medication used to treat opioid use disorder. He had a little metal box filled with his daily doses he received from a methadone clinic. I joined him once to learn more about the process.
“I’m always in pain,” he told a counselor. “Always.”
I tried keeping this in mind when he mistreated his body and my mother. If she were still alive, I wouldn’t have written this column with so many candid details. But, just like with Perry, I believe that more people need to share their experiences about addiction. It can possibly rescue others who are drowning in it. Or at least we can make a connection.
Perry said he attended more than 6,000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and entered rehab 15 times, spending upwards of $9 million trying to get sober. My brother didn’t have the luxury of such wealth. He spent relationships to try to get sober. Ours is still a complicated one even though he’s been dead for years.
“When I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned,” Perry said one year ago this month. “I want that [helping other addicts] to be the first thing that’s mentioned.”
It didn’t happen that way. “Friends” comes first, addiction second, if you’re scoring at home.
I hope my brother’s troubled life and premature death can help other addicts and their tortured families. Addiction is as common as a lie. Or a rationalization. This is especially true for addicts who don’t know where to turn or who to confess their deepest secret.
“Find someone who’s smarter than you about this and talk to them, and be honest about it,” Perry said in that interview last year.
My brother was always the smartest person in the room. Any room. His addiction wasn’t impressed. Or intimidated. He died Jan. 21, 2009. I’m not sure what was in his 50-year-old body. It doesn’t matter to me how he died.
When that bottle of beer approached me at the party and said, “Matthew Perry died,” I wanted to reply, “So did my brother.” But no one there cared about his death. Or his life. So I made a bad joke about addicts drowning in regrets.
The beer bottle winced, but I bet that Perry and my brother would have laughed.
