{"id":10990,"date":"2024-02-05T18:49:38","date_gmt":"2024-02-05T18:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/river-gas.com\/?p=10990"},"modified":"2024-02-05T18:49:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-05T18:49:38","slug":"maureen-callahan-how-sad-that-matthew-perrys-legacy-was-a-tragic-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/05\/maureen-callahan-how-sad-that-matthew-perrys-legacy-was-a-tragic-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"MAUREEN CALLAHAN: How sad that Matthew Perry’s legacy was a tragic lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

The One Where It Was All a Tragic Lie.<\/p>\n

Matthew Perry, we now know, wasn’t clean at the end. In fact, despite claims to the contrary in his best-selling memoir, he was probably never clean.<\/p>\n

His autopsy report, released last week, was yet another shock: He had enough ketamine in his system to anesthetize a surgical patient.<\/p>\n

Perry was selling fellow addicts a fantasy. It’s quite possible he needed to believe it.<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n

‘I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again’, he told People magazine last year. ‘I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober \u2014 and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction \u2014 to write it all down. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people’.<\/p>\n

If anyone still needed help, it was Perry himself.<\/b><\/p>\n

As Alison Boshoff exclusively reported in the Mail, a source close to Perry revealed the truth: ‘He lied to everyone about being clean. He never was. It is very sad. You know, the biggest lie he told was probably to himself’.<\/p>\n

Perry, we now know, wasn’t clean at the end. In fact, despite claims to the contrary in his best-selling memoir, he was probably never clean. His autopsy report, released last week, was yet another shock: He had enough ketamine in his system to anesthetize a surgical patient.<\/p>\n

Yet we all believed him, and that’s not just down to his acting ability. We wanted to believe him. Perry’s greatest selling point was his refusal to wrap his story up neatly, his soft-bellied vulnerability.<\/p>\n

He wrote it and said it over and over: the gravity of his addictions meant he would never be safe from himself.<\/p>\n

‘I don’t have another sobriety in me’, he wrote. ‘If I went out, I would never be able to come back\u2026 It’s going to kill me’.<\/p>\n

In his self-proclaimed quest to help other addicts, he was willing to disclose the humiliations he suffered, the ravages to his body: His top teeth falling out all at once; the fourteen operations that left him left weeping; his near-death experience; the surgeries still to come.<\/p>\n

‘I will never be done’, he wrote. ‘I will always have the bowels of a man in his nineties\u2026 the scars\u2026 my stomach looks like a topographical map of China. And they f**king hurt’.<\/p>\n

Perry spoke of his colostomy bag, his sexual impotence, the $9 million he spent trying to get clean, the 6,000 AA meetings and the 55 Vicodin a day.<\/p>\n

He confessed to being so desperately unhappy as a teenager that he got down on his knees and begged God for fame.<\/p>\n

And wow, did he get it \u2014 global superstardom few will ever know. But as the saying goes: More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.<\/p>\n

For all his specific gifts, Perry died the sad, lonely, ignominious death of any celebrity drug addict: Elvis on the toilet, Whitney in the bathtub, Prince in his elevator.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Perry’s life post-memoir was a misery. He hid the truth, got nasty, and pushed the people closest to him away.<\/p>\n

He sought solace in women far too young: a 25-year-old former Miss USA, a 22-year-old porn star. He lost his fianc\u00e9e Molly Hurwitz after she caught him messaging a 19-year-old on Raya.<\/p>\n

He was, in other words, uniquely gifted – and a total clich\u00e9.<\/b><\/p>\n

He allowed himself to believe that his wealth and fame made him exempt from the rules: Hence, as he admitted, the chain-smoking in his hospital bed, crashing his Porsche into someone’s living room with no consequences, chartering a private plane to escape rehab and get high.<\/p>\n

He had the arrested development so common among addicts, notably his obsession<\/a> with Batman.<\/i><\/u><\/p>\n

He had the superhero’s bat wings etched into the bottom of his pool. He had a black-and-red car that he called the Batmobile. He called himself ‘Mattman’ and, less than two weeks before his death, posted his pool’s bat signal lit up in red, with the caption: ‘Sleep well everybody, I’ve got the city tonight’<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unsettling stuff for a guy eligible for AARP membership.<\/b><\/p>\n

As it turns out, Perry’s life post-memoir was a misery. He hid the truth, got nasty, and pushed the people closest to him away. He sought solace in women far too young: a 25-year-old former Miss USA, a 22-year-old porn star. He lost his fianc\u00e9e Molly Hurwitz after she caught him messaging a 19-year-old on Raya. (Pictured: Porn star Kylie Rocket).<\/p>\n

But Perry never had to live in the real world, and that, as much as his addictions, did him in.<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n

‘Angry and mean’, was one friend’s description of Perry in the days before his death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another source told the New York Post that Perry struggled with AA meetings in New York City.<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

‘Mr. Perry wasn’t able to deal with the tough love’, the source said. ‘I feel for him, but in my 25 years’ experience, sometimes “helping” someone is really enabling. I think he had a lot of enablers who meant well. He was in a golden cage’.<\/p>\n

In recent days, his ketamine use has been explained away as purely therapeutic and under a doctor’s care, used to treat his ‘depression and anxiety’.<\/p>\n

But read the fine print of the autopsy report and you’ll see Perry’s overdose was, almost certainly, brought on through illicit recreational use.<\/p>\n

‘His last known treatment was one-and-a-half weeks prior to death’, the report concluded. ‘The ketamine in his system at death could not be from that infusion therapy, since ketamine’s half-life is three to four hours, or less’.<\/p>\n

An important point: medicinal ketamine has been shown, when administered correctly, to be highly successful at treating post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and addiction. Perry’s overdose should do nothing to change that.<\/p>\n