"So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke

Your love life's DOA

It's like you're always stuck in second gear

When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month

Or even your year, but

I'll be there for you."

You may remember these are lyrics from the title song of "Friends," one of the most popular sitcoms of the television era, which went on to create a pop culture renaissance of sorts in the mid-90s and continues to be loved by millions of fans around the world including me. (We all have tried to imitate the way the cast talks at one point, haven't we?)

Even now, after 28 years of its release, Chandler, Monica, Joey, Rachel, Ross, and Phoebe continue to make me smile, no matter what mood I am on. I feel like I am friends with them in real life. I can watch any episode of the show at any time, and it makes me smile right away as if I am watching clips from my own story.

But I digress. This is not a Friends review. So I will put my love for the show aside and let us all focus on our main topic—Chandler Bing. Not just the character from the series but also the real-life person behind him, Matthew Perry.

Matthew Perry published his memoir a few weeks ago and as soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to read it. After finishing the book in 72 hours, here I am trying to process Chandler by writing about him.

‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing’ is a very fun memoir. I have to admit that it is the first book I finished reading in one sitting in a long time. (I have literally become the Friends characters in that I start books and just leave it after reading a few pages.)

As a big fan of the show and Chandler, I expected the book to be a laugh riot and was shocked when Perry starts it with these sad yet powerful lines:

"Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty.

And I should be dead."

In his 250-page-long memoir, Perry bares to us his life-long battle with alcoholism, opiates, and emotional issues as an 'abandoned fella' in horrific detail.

In his Chandler-style conversational prose, he “explains” how he spent over $7 million in his series of attempts to stay sober, attended 6,000 AA (alcoholics anonymous) meetings, detoxed 65 times, spent almost half of his 52 years in rehabs and healthcare, had 14 surgeries, had an “explosion” of the bowel, and was in a coma for 14 days.

Could there be any more vehement self-confessions?

So, finally did someone have the balls to tell us what life behind fame, money, and a phobia against commitments looks like?

It becomes special when you remember the series episode by episode; the book feels like Chandler is whispering his memories out loud to you, in his ever-frustrated and despondent way of talking.

"I think now I'm at the point with opiates where it's the same situation. There are just not enough. I took 1800 milligrams of opiates in Switzerland per day and wasn't high. So, what am I gonna do? Call a drug dealer and ask for all the drugs?"

The book has a lengthy description of his guilt trips of both past and present events—expressed parallelly—from how he was abandoned by his father and mother, how he ended up in Los Angeles, and his self-imposed notions of impotence to how he acquired the role of Chandler Bing, a hilarious detail of his flirty encounter with Julia Roberts, his bromance with Bruce Willis, his attempts to fill the 'holes of life' with uncountable women and fame, and his attempts to try something other than Friends.

"Oh, that Julia Roberts.

Even in moments like this, the jokes flew by. Craig would have said it faster, but he wasn't there. She laughed that Julia Roberts laugh, the one that could launch a thousand ships."

I have to mention that this book could trigger you if you are sensitive to topics like drugs, alcoholism, and addiction in general. The memoir has graphic descriptions of a being full-time drug addict, how Perry spent all his time mingling with drug dealers, managing doctors, making excuses of pain and anxiety to drink or take pills, and on and off trips with rehabs. The actor brutally confesses how it becomes more and more impossible for him to quit drugs.

"That's when the bad behavior started — I got shitty grades, I started smoking, I beat up Pierre's son (an eventual prime minister himself) Justin Trudeau. (I decided to end my argument with him when he was put in charge of an entire army.)"

My biggest takeaway from the book has been how the character of Chandler in many ways represents the personal life of Perry in many ways—his personality traits, his childhood, and the way he talks.

"Two weeks later, I was driven to the set of Friends by a technician from Malibu.

I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center—at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment of the iconic show—in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician."

For me, this book changes my entire perception of the show and of life to a degree too. Now, I am very conscious about Chandler and keep thinking about how Perry was either high on drugs or alcohol and bearing an unthinkable amount of pain while making others smile with his quick and witty humorous one-liners while rewatching the show.

His truce with God, craving for real relationships, respect for human emotions, admiration for family members, and eagerness to live a life expressed at the end of the book gives me hope that things will be alright in the future.

Also, knowing he had been sober for quite some time when he appeared at the Friends Reunion last year makes me glad he is finally happy and recovering.

"Addicts are not bad people. We're just people who are trying to feel better, but we have this disease. When I feel bad, I think, Give me something that makes me feel better."

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir

Author: Matthew Perry

Publisher: Flatiron Books