The Matthew Perry Netflix Documentary Brought My Own Years of Addiction Into Focus

Last night I watched The One About Matthew Perry, Netflix’s new three-part documentary about the former Friends star, in one sitting. It celebrates the actor’s remarkable career while following the long, destructive course of his addiction.

I was moved by his sister Mia Perry Bowick’s account of the torment his relapses caused the family. I was shocked to see Perry at the Friends reunion, three years after the colon rupture and coma that nearly killed him. And I was furious at Peter Hitchens’ idiotic attack on addicts on Newsnight—yet proud of the way Perry put him in his place.

The documentary ends with Perry found unresponsive in the pool at his home in California. The medical examiner later determined that the acute effects of ketamine caused his death, with drowning among the contributing factors.

As I watched, the feelings I’d been experiencing gathered into something unexpected: gratitude. I have my own history with addiction, and I was lucky enough to break the cycle. I also felt deep sadness that Perry never found the same path to recovery.

One moment stayed with me. Bowick suggests that Perry’s addiction might have grown from a sense that he wasn’t good enough—perhaps rooted in his parents’ divorce and growing up in a broken family. I recognized that feeling.

In 2020, during the pandemic, I was writing my memoir, The Closet, and started therapy because I was worried about my drinking. After watching the documentary last night, I went back to the book. I was struck by the anger in its pages, especially when I wrote about my relationship with my dad.

I asked myself how I had really felt in those moments. The truth was that I desperately wanted my dad’s approval and rarely felt I had it as a child. For me, that echoed something in Perry’s story.

My therapist connected my need for acceptance with some of my addictive tendencies. They became apparent when I moved to London in my early twenties. I was driven to prove myself, a restlessness I recognized in the young Perry in the documentary and carried a sense of never quite measuring up. Growing up gay in a society that wished I weren’t only sharpened that unease, pushing me towards outside comforts to cope.

By my early thirties, I had developed a serious drinking problem.

Alcohol had been part of family life for as long as I could remember. My parents shared a bottle of wine most nights; family parties revolved around it. As I grew up, drinking shaped my early experiences with friends. Between 14 and 34, I can summon few truly happy memories that aren’t laced with Campo Viejo or punctuated by sticky shots of sambuca.

At university, being drunk and stoned with my friends most nights was normal. Not joining in would have seemed strange. But by then I had also started drinking alone.

I remember returning to Leeds, where I was studying for a BA in Fine Art, after the Christmas holidays in my second year. I arrived at our draughty, dirty old house—which I loved—before most of my friends. I stayed in, opened and finished a bottle of red, and watched a film. It was the first time I’d drunk alone, but it wouldn’t be the last. I felt no shame; if anything, a bottle to myself seemed restrained compared with what I drank in company.

That year, I struggled with frequent bouts of depression but never connected them to my drinking. I couldn’t imagine that alcohol wasn’t the best thing in the world for me.

When I started working at fashion magazines in London, the drinking continued. Cocaine kept the night going; codeine softened the crash. It all seemed justifiable because everyone around me appeared to be taking as much, if not more.

As the years passed, I began to notice how habitual my drinking had become. It didn’t seem to hinder my career. I was thriving: eight years as style director of Esquire, then five as style director of GQ. Alcohol also made the endless social obligations of the job—parties, shows, dinners, shop openings—far more manageable than they would have been sober.

I think I first recognized the problem as the worst months of the pandemic began to fade. Lockdowns were lifting and life was returning to normal, but I felt different. After so much time in close quarters with my partner, I realized I was no longer happy in the relationship.

Instead of facing that truth, I used substances to escape it.

There were too many nights when I crawled into bed at five in the morning, midweek and alone, after spending the previous hours with only drink and drugs for company. I often cried for no reason. By then, I was mixing codeine with alcohol every day. The familiar warmth in my stomach created the illusion of happiness, and at the time that felt easier to bear than the truth.

I often arrived at therapy puffy-faced and on the brink of tears. My therapist gently but firmly repeated the same message: for our work to make a difference, I had to stop drinking completely. It was the only way, she said, to confront what was going on in my mind and begin to heal.

I tried. A sober week here, a Dry January there. It never stuck.

The crunch point came in the autumn. My former boyfriend and I had taken a month-long break to work out what we wanted. One night, I arrived at a friend’s dinner party already wrecked, having drunk a bottle of wine and taken half a packet of Nurofen Plus, an over-the-counter painkiller that contains codeine.

I was red-faced, miserable and belligerent. At some point, I picked a fight with one of my closest friends, and she stormed out. I was left at the party, drunk and dazed, slowly realising how far I’d let things spiral.

When I woke the next morning, I couldn’t remember what the fight had been about. I searched my memory for a clue but found nothing. Too embarrassed to ask my friends directly, I sent a few tentative white-flag texts - “Morning!” and “How are we feeling today?” -to check I hadn’t upset anyone else. From what I could gather, I hadn’t.

It was a drizzly Sunday, and I felt as close to suicidal as I ever had. Desperate, I googled “AA meetings near me” and found one in Camberwell that evening. At the meeting, in a damp church hall just off Church Street, I listened to people share their experiences. Seeing a room full of people who had chosen to take control of their lives was enough to pull me back from the brink. I left feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time: hope. I haven’t touched a drink since, or anything else for that matter.

My dad helped me stop, too. He had taken responsibility for himself and cut alcohol out of his life. His example, and his belief in me, showed me change was possible. Without Dad, I don’t know where I’d be. I certainly don’t think I’d be here writing this piece.

Watching Perry’s story, I felt deep sadness for his family and friends. The documentary makes clear how much he was loved, and how devastating addiction can be even with people around you who care.

One of the first things you discover in sobriety is that it doesn’t solve everything. In those early, euphoric weeks, it can feel that way: there’s a rush of pride and a sense of resilience you didn’t know you had. Then the harder work begins. Without drugs or alcohol to numb the edges, you must face what you’ve been avoiding. There’s nowhere left to hide, and that can be frightening.

For me, that meant accepting that my childhood had its challenges, but I wasn’t a lost little boy anymore. My future was mine to shape. If I wanted to be close to my family and maintain healthy friendships, I had to let go of blame. I couldn’t change what had happened, but I could choose what I carried forward.

Eventually, I realised my strongest reason to quit drinking wasn’t fear or shame; it was self-respect. I wanted to be proud of myself, to like the person I was becoming and to fulfil my potential. I didn’t want to be someone who could only find joy when drunk or high. I wanted a real, meaningful relationship. I wanted success in my career. None of that felt possible until I got sober.

I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Perry, facing his addiction having achieved unimaginable success in the glare of the spotlight, surrounded by enablers and with endless cash at his disposal.

As I write this in my office at Esquire—where I am now editor-in-chief (a role I couldn’t possible have fulfilled when I was still using), I feel sadness for Perry’s family and friends, and for the fact that he never received the help that carried me into recovery. I hope his legacy draws more attention to the horror of addiction and encourages people like him—like me—to seek the help they need.

I celebrated five years of sobriety last week, and I’ve never felt happier. If you need addiction related advice or support, I can recommend FRANK or Alcoholics Anonymous as good places to start.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com/uk.