New Matthew Perry Foundation Follows The Late Actor’s Lifelong Advocacy For People Struggling With Addiction

Topline

The late actor Matthew Perry’s close friends have reportedly launched a new foundation named in his honor to support people experiencing drug addiction, continuing Perry’s lifelong efforts to help others following his own decades-long struggle with substance abuse.

Perry said he wanted to be remembered for his advocacy for people struggling with drug addiction. … [+] (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)

2022 Invision

Key Facts

The Matthew Perry Foundation, which Perry reportedly planned to launch prior to his death, will to help individuals struggling with addiction and is now accepting donations, and will be managed by the National Philanthropic Trust, multiple news outlets reported Friday

Perry, an actor best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends, was vocal about struggling with addiction since he was a teenager and said he wanted to be remembered first for his advocacy efforts instead of his acting projects.

Perry lobbied Congress in 2011 to fund drug courts, an alternative to incarceration that aims to help individuals recover from addiction and reduce future criminal activity.

In 2013, Perry transformed his former Malibu, California, mansion into a sober living facility, which reportedly operated until 2015.

Perry was honored with the Champion of Recovery award from the Obama Administration’s Office of National Drug Control Policy in 2013 for his advocacy efforts.

In his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was published in 2022, Perry spoke openly about his addiction struggles, and the dedication to the book states: “For all of the sufferers out there. You know who you are.”

Perry died October 28 at age 54 after being found unresponsive in his hot tub in his Los Angeles home, and the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office is still investigating his cause of death.

Key Background

Perry spoke openly about his struggles with substance abuse in many interviews. He said he struggled with addiction since the age of 14, when he started drinking alcohol. He later became addicted to painkillers after being prescribed Vicodin following a 1997 jet ski accident. Perry said he had a personal rule not to drink while on set, but would often film Friends, on which he starred from 1994 to 2004, while sweating and shaking due to hangovers. His co-star Lisa Kudrow reportedly said his castmates all knew about his addiction struggles and felt they were “hopelessly standing on the sidelines.” Perry said his castmates tried to help him, but he was in denial about his substance abuse issues. He went to rehab multiple times while working on Friends, including in 1997, 2001 and 2003. In 2016, Perry said he did not remember filming seasons three through six of Friends because of his substance abuse. In 2018, Perry suffered a gastrointestinal perforation because of opioid abuse, leaving him in a coma for two weeks and the hospital for five months. While in rehab in Switzerland in 2020, Perry faked prescriptions to get 1,800 milligrams of Oxycontin a day and daily ketamine infusions. In October 2022, just before his memoir was published, Perry said he had been sober for 18 months. Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman and his friend Athenna Crosby both said Perry was sober before his death.

Surprising Fact

Perry said in interviews he could not watch Friends because of the addiction struggles he faced while filming. “I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show, because I can go, ‘drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine.’ I could tell season by season by how I looked,” Perry said in an interview with the Q with Tom Power podcast in November 2022.

Big Number

$9 million. That’s how much Perry has estimated he spent on efforts to get sober.

Crucial Quote

“I’m a sober guy for 17 years. I want to say that the night I went into AA, Matthew brought me in,” Hank Azaria, a recurring actor on Friends, said on Instagram following Perry’s death. “The whole first year I was sober, we went to meetings together. As a sober person, he was so caring and giving and wise and he totally helped me get sober.”