Not long before he won the life-changing role of Chandler Bing in the global sitcom phenomenon Friends, Matthew Perry prayed: “God, you can do whatever you want to me. Just please make me famous.” In this memoir, Perry talks about achieving that mammoth success and fame: at its peak, the series’ cast members were each earning more than a million dollars an episode. But his book is chiefly about the titular “Big Terrible Thing”: Perry’s alcoholism and painkiller/opioid addiction (OxyContin, Vicodin, Dilaudid, to name a few) that led to him spending more than half his life in rehab and treatment centres, detoxing more than 65 times, and paying upwards of $9m trying to get sober.
Famous by his mid-20s, Perry’s compulsions led to him suffering pancreatitis by 30. In 2018, aged 49, his colon exploded, which is where his memoir begins: a vivid near-death hellscape (counsellors try to stop him going to hospital, thinking it’s “drug-seeking behaviour”) involving seven-hour surgery (with a 2% chance of survival), a coma, huge scars and nine months with a colostomy bag that keeps bursting, covering him with faeces. (It’s the threat of a permanent colostomy bag that frightens Perry into quitting.)
