Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“I have lived half my life in one form or another of treatment center or sober living house. Which is fine when you are twenty-four years old, less fine when you are forty-two years old. Now I was forty-nine, still struggling to get this monkey off my back.”

Providing context to his ruptured colon, Perry conveys the duration of his struggle with substance use. He explains that, despite spending a significant portion of his life in treatment, he is still battling addiction as he approaches 50. The “monkey” on his back is a commonly used metaphor to describe the tenacity of addiction.

“I don’t write all this so anyone will feel sorry for me—I write these words because they are true. I write them because someone else may be confused by the fact that they know they should stop drinking—like me, they have all the information, and they understand the consequences—but they still can’t stop drinking. You are not alone, my brothers and sisters.”

Here, Perry outlines his motivation for writing the memoir. He clarifies that his book is not intended to evoke readerly sympathy. Instead, he hopes his story will speak to people living with addiction and alleviate their sense of isolation. Perry directly addresses and aligns himself with this readership by referring to them as “my brothers and sisters.”

“I need love, but I don’t trust it. If I drop my game, my Chandler, and show you who I really am, you might notice me, but worse, you might notice me and leave me. And I can’t have that. I won’t survive that.”

Perry describes The Fear of Abandonment: a recurring theme of the memoir. He admits that while craving love, he is unwilling to emotionally commit to relationships due to a conviction that he will be rejected. The author also alludes to his strong identification with the character Chandler in Friends. Both tend to hide their emotions behind humor.

“Down there, somewhere in that valley, or in that vast ocean out there beyond the Pacific Coast Highway, on the gleaming primaries of the red-tail’s wings, that’s where parenting is. That’s where love is. That’s where home is. I can feel safe now.”

Here, the author links his attraction to panoramic views to his formative experience as an “unaccompanied minor” on a plane. Perry describes the relief he felt as a five-year-old when he saw the lights of Los Angeles and knew that his father would be waiting for him. Consequently, he associates looking down on a landscape with safety and parental love.

“I watched my father drink six vodka tonics and live a perfectly functional life, so I figured it was possible. I figured I’d be able to do the same thing. But there was something lurking in my shadows and my genes, like a creepy beast in a dark place, something I had that my father did not, and it would be a decade before we knew what it was. Alcoholism, addiction—you call it what you want, I’ve chosen to call it a Big Terrible Thing.”

Perry explores the nature of addiction as he describes watching his father drink. As a teenager, he absorbed and emulated his father’s alcohol consumption. Looking back later, he realizes that his father’s relationship with alcohol differs from his own. Perry’s father can drink large quantities without adversely affecting his professional commitments. He is also able to give up alcohol overnight. The author introduces the motif of the “Big Terrible Thing” to convey his overwhelming addiction to alcohol.

“Alcohol was my best friend because it never wanted to talk about itself. It was just always there, the mute dog at my heel, gazing up at me, always ready to go for a walk. It took away so much of the pain, including the fact that when I was alone, I was lonely, and that when I was with people, I was lonely too. It made movies better, songs better, it made me better.”

Perry describes addiction via various metaphors in his memoir. Here, he compares alcohol to two benign images: a “best friend” and a faithful dog. Evoking loyalty, these figurative comparisons emphasize the ever-present lure of alcohol for those with alcoholism. In challenging times, it is a dangerously reliable source of comfort.

“I have spent my life being attracted to unavailable women. It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure out that this had something to do with my relationship with my mother. My mother captivated every room she entered. I vividly remember being at some fancy ballroom when I was about six years old, and when my mom came in, every head in the room turned. I wanted her to turn and look at me in these moments, but she was working and could not—it took me only thirty-seven years to work that out.”

Perry frequently outlines how his childhood relationship with his mother impacts his relationships with women in later life. Here he relates his desire for his mother’s undivided attention to his determination to charm “unavailable women” such as Eddie Van Halen’s wife, Valerie Bertinelli.

“I was going to be so famous that all the pain I carried with me would melt like frost in sunlight; and any new threats would bounce off me as though this show was a force field I could cloak myself in.”

When Perry secures the role of Chandler in Friends, he believes that the inevitable fame will solve all his problems and make him happy. The author’s use of hyperbole to describe fame’s powers highlights the unrealistic nature of his expectations.

“I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams.”

Here, Perry contrasts the alluring promise of fame with its reality. On achieving his ambitions, the author realizes that fame does not equate to happiness. However, he also recognizes that those who have not experienced it will find this hard to believe.

“I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”

Perry’s low self-esteem and fear of abandonment cause him to end romantic relationships before his partners can reject him. The author uses his breakup with movie star Julia Roberts to illustrate this self-destructive pattern of behavior.

“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season—when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”

Here, Perry reveals that his addictions can be traced by his physical appearance in various seasons of Friends. Directly addressing the reader, the revelation typifies the author’s frank and often self-deprecating tone. It also provides insight into the making of the iconic sitcom.

“In nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguins group around it and prop it up until it’s better. This is what my costars on Friends did for me.”

Using the analogy of a colony of penguins, Perry illustrates the support he received from his Friends costars. The author candidly admits that the severity of his addictions impaired his professionalism while filming the sitcom. He also gratefully describes the tireless patience of the other cast members.

“Once again, my idea was to pull a geographic. I still thought that if I removed myself from the situation I was in, I would be able to quit all the drugs and drinking and come out fighting. (All I was actually doing was tripling my workload while the drinking and drugs continued to escalate.) Because wherever you go, there you are.”

Here, Perry describes his decision to make a movie in Texas after promising his Friends costars he will get help for his addictions. The author uses the recurring symbol of pulling “a geographic” to summarize his behavior. Throughout the memoir, Perry moves from one location to another in a futile attempt to escape himself and his addiction.

“During that time, I met at least five women that I could have married, had children with. Had I done so just once, I would not now be sitting in a huge house, overlooking the ocean, with no one to share it with, save a sober companion, a nurse, and a gardener twice a week.”

The author expresses regret for squandering his many opportunities to settle down with loving and compatible partners. Perry emphasizes his subsequent loneliness by admitting that his only companions are paid staff members. The extract highlights the consequences of his fear of abandonment and the emptiness of fame.

“I had a monster in my brain, a monster who wanted to get me alone, and convince me to have that first drink or pill, and then that monster would engulf me.”

In exploring The Nature of Addiction, the author emphasizes that the disease involves a continual battle with the self. Figuratively comparing addiction to a brain-dwelling “monster,” he evokes the symbolic “Big Terrible Thing” of the book’s title.

“This is what it’s like to be an addict: you do things you never dreamed you would do. My wonderful father had dropped everything to move in, to love and support me through one more self-created disaster, and I paid him back by hiding drugs in my nightstand.”

Tracing his addictions’ impact, the author conveys how it changes his essential character. Throughout the memoir, Perry candidly describes how he deceives both medical professionals and loved ones as they try to help him toward recovery. Here, he conveys his shame at secretly taking pills while his father believes he is sober.

“I had been in the presence of God. I was certain of it. And this time I had prayed for the right thing: help.”

Here, the author describes a pivotal moment in his life. After he prays for help to fight his addictions, a golden light appears in his kitchen. From this point, Perry’s desire to become sober is fortified by his belief in God’s presence. The incident contrasts with his earlier appeal to God to make him famous at any cost: a prayer the author later regrets.

“Friends had been a safe place, a touchstone of calm for me; it had given me a reason to get out of bed every morning, and it had also given me a reason to take it just a little bit easier the night before. It was the time of our lives.”

The memoir portrays filming Friends as Perry’s professional and personal highlight. The show becomes his “touchstone of calm,” as he finds the work creatively fulfilling and views his costars as family. When filming of the show ends, Perry struggles to recapture the “safe place” that Friends represents. As a result, his issues and addictions escalate.

“I was a complete mess of a person—selfish and narcissistic. Everything had to be about me, and I matched that with a really handy inferiority complex, an almost fatal combo. I was all about myself from the time I was ten years old.”

Throughout the memoir, there is a contrast between Perry’s often unlikable character as a younger man and his more mature insights as the author. Here, the author describes how therapy helped him to confront his character flaws.

“I hadn’t been there for anyone for so long, my addiction being my best friend and my evil friend and my punisher and my lover, all in one. My big terrible thing.”

Here, the author personifies his addiction, describing it as a source of both comfort and torture. The symbol of The Big Terrible Thing underlines the overwhelming nature of addiction as it takes precedence over everyone and everything else.

“The idea of being famous, the idea of being rich, the idea of being me—I can’t enjoy any of it unless I’m high.”

Perry underlines the futility of his pursuit of fame in the face of his addictions. While fame seems to offer the solution to his unhappiness, he cannot enjoy his success without resorting to drugs or alcohol.

“There are so many scars on my stomach that all I need to do is look down to know that I’ve been through a war, a self-inflicted war.”

Throughout his memoir, the author details the debilitating physical effects of addiction. The scars on his stomach remind him of the numerous colon surgeries he has undergone due to opioid use. Perry’s figurative reference to “a self-inflicted war” highlights the concept of addiction as an internal conflict.

“As for me, I would trade places with each and every one of my friends—Pressman, Bierko, any of them—because none of them had the big terrible thing to deal with. None of them had battled their entire lives with a brain that was built to kill them. I would give it all up to not have that. No one believes this, but it’s true.”

Here, the author compares himself to fellow actors similarly obsessed with becoming famous. Out of his friendship group, Perry experiences the greatest fame. However, he claims he would trade his success for a life free of addiction.