The Ketamine Queen | Matthew Perry Investigation 2

0:13 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Exposed Scandalous Files of the Elite. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and before we jump into today's episode, I want to thank our August Patreon members of our Global Celebrity Tier, just really really quick, Miss Cherie Barber from Waltersboro, South Carolina. Miss Charlotte Upton of Hamilton, Alabama, Miss Michelle Martin of Prairieville, Louisiana, and Miss Jennifer Gatlan of Atwater, California. And thank you so much for joining in August. You are all global celebrities. I love you, love you, love you. We could not do this without you. And hey, if you can't support them, the I totally get it. No worries, but thank you very much to those members. And look quickly, I found this interesting Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana with five members, California, Minnesota, Florida, and Wisconsin. All of these states are represented by Patreon supporters.

1:24 Thank you so much. If you didn't hear your state, hey join and I'll shout your stayed out as well as you for all our global celebrities. And let's get into this part two of the investigation into the death of Matthew Perry. And I'm just going to take a couple of minutes and go over some interesting information on a couple of these I guess you could say cast of characters. And then I've got a big surprise for you after that. And last time we left you, we had covered the indictment, but we didn't really get specifically into a couple of these assholes, if you will, that were certainly culpable in the death of Matthew Perry. And I want to talk real quick about his personal assistant, Kenneth Iwa Masa, who to me, look, all these people suck, all these people deserve to be in jail, but Kenneth Iowa Masa, he is a special kind of asshole. Why Because he had a personal relationship with Matthew Perry. Right, this was his quote unquote friend. As a matter of fact, it was his live in personal assistant. And not only was he allowing this to go on without saying a word and being completely complicit in it. I mean, he was out there picking up the freaking drugs for Matthew Perry, but he also gave him the injection that killed him.

2:52 Special kind of asshole, in my opinion. So I'm not going to go into the actual anymore of the indictment because a lot of it is repetitive shit that I covered on the first episode. But I found an interesting article that I'm gonna read for you real quick, and it says how culpable is Matthew Perry's personal assistant for the actor's death. Federal prosecutors revealed that Matthew Perry's personal assistant administered the dose of ketamine that ultimately led to the Friends star death at age of fifty four. On Thursday, August fifteenth, federal prosecutors made a bombshell announcement that five people have been charged in the actor's death, but how culpable is Iowa Masa? People magazine who this is the article I'm referring to, spoke to two legal experts about Iowa Massa's role in Perry's October twenty eighth, twenty twenty three death, when the actor was flooding face down in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home. One expert said, the living assistant is the least culpable of five people charged.

4:02 I would fucking totally disagree with that, but I'll proceed back to the article. Another, however, says Iowa Masa is the most closely tied to eventually what happened. I would agree with that. On autopsy released in December show that Perry died from acute effects of ketymine, in addition to other contributing factors such as drowning, coronary artery disease, and effects of a medication used to treat opioid use disorder. At the time of his death, Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy. The nature of his death was determined to be accidental. The US Department of Justice announced on Thursday, August fifteenth that the ketamine Queen Jazzfine Sanga in doctor Salvador Placincia, a licensed physician, or the lead defendants in the case. Sanga, allegedly sold the batch of ketamine that led to Perry's death. Placencia allegedly told another patient in mid twenty twenty three that Perry was spiraling out of control with his addiction, and yet he continued to offer kenemine to him. During one injection, he saw mister Perry freeze up in his blood pressure spike. Despite that, he left additional vials for defendant Awamasa to administer to mister Perry.

5:22 Eric Fleming fifty four pleaded guilty on August eighth to conspiracy to distribute ketemene and one count of distribution of ketemine resulting in death. He admitted in court documents he distributed the ketamine that killed Perry, and that means he sold it to Perry's assistant, not that he actually gave the shot. Right. Doctor Mark Chavez agreed to play guilty in one count of conspiracy to distribute kenemine. He admitted in his plea agreement to allegedly selling the drugs to Placincia, and y'all, I know there's names flying around everywhere and it's hard to keep up, but I can't do a whole lot about that, unfortunately now. Iowa Masa had been Perry's assistant since nineteen ninety four and lived with him.

6:12 On the day that Perry died, he administered three doses of ketamine to him, first at eight thirty am, then again at twelve thirty pm, then forty minutes after that, Perry asked Iowa Masa to get the hot tub ready for him, saying, shoot me up with the big one. According to the plea agreement. Now, these experts that people talk to, one of them said that Iowa Massa was just doing as he was told. You have an assistant, and if your boss is a drug addict and you want to keep your job, maybe you might do it for that reason. That's twenty kinds of wrong advice number one, and it's bullshit number two. You can't ask somebody to illegally do something. If I didn't know my own company and I had a boss and he told me to go rob a bank, I'm not going to go do it.

7:06 What a dumb ass. This guy was. Former federal prosecutor Mark Chuckco, head of the Government Investigations and Corporate Compliance Practice, views it differently. The four other defendants exploited his addiction, Chuckko said about Perry. Iowa Massa, however, was actually injecting the drug into Matthew Perry. So so that makes him most closely tied to what happened. BINGO, shout out to that guy, because he nailed it. Iowa Masa faces up to fifteen years in prison, should be longer. By pleading guilty, he enters a cooperating deal with federal prosecutors. He is also the link to all the other defendants, meaning that Iowa Masa is potentially a valuable witness. I would say he's a very valuable witness. This may end up to a lesser sentence for Iowasa. So that's kind of a little bit about who Iowa Masa was and how he is linked to this whole thing. What an asshole, That's all I can say about that. Now, what about the Kennemine Queen?

8:13 She is all over the internet right now. Look physically beautiful woman, not someone you would look at and think she was a ketamine dealer, but she totally is, and she has a lot of victims out there. It's not just Matthew Perry and my research. But I want to cover this quick article from the New York Post and it's titled how studious NBA grat Jasvin Sanga became Matthew Perry's alleged kennemine queen. Growing up in an upscale Los Angeles suburb home toots of lebs like Kim Kardashian and Will Smith, Jasvin sang As seemed to be on a trajectory for success that would make her parents proud. A friend described her as meticulous and studious in high schoo her parents owned a franchise business, and she got into the University of California at Irvine, which is a good school, and then she went to England for her NBA. But in March, Sang's mother had to bail out the forty one year old on one hundred thousand dollars bond after she was arrested for being a large volume drug dealer.

9:22 Now she stands accused of selling the lethal dose of ketamine to friend star Matthew Perry. As former federal prosecutor Nima Ramini previously told The Post, Sang it is in a world of hurt right now she could potentially get life in prison. Old friends say that Jazzvin, who returned to la after getting her NBA at Wholt Business School in London in twenty ten, was a different person than the girl they once knew. She looked completely different than when she was in high school, said one old friend. It looked like she got a news job and maybe had a few other done to her face, but still she was doing business on the straight and narrow before the drugs. She started a mail salon and that business flopped as a firm remembered it. Sanga was being left behind by her peers around twenty fifteen. Most of the people she grew up with were working professionals, They had significant others and kids. Sanga, on the other hand, was partying a lot and being excessive on the weekends. Apparently running out of option, she tried her hand at being a party promoter. She developed a lot of connections and hung out with a clan of girls. They called themselves something related to Hello Kitty. Among her friends was Pearla Hudson, who was married to Guns and Roses Guitars Slash from two thousand and one to twenty eighteen. Photos on Instagram show Sanga in Hudson's standing next to a private jet

10:53 and in exotic locations. On social media, Hudson described Sana as my best wing man of all time. Other photos showed singing with Charlie Sheen, Sanger Mat Perry, as well as Charlie Sheen's ex wife Brooke Mueller in a La Area rehab. Well, that's a good place to meet him. Neither Mueller nor pearl Of Hudson are accused of drug use or any other wrongdoing in connection to Sanga. The article notes, so that's a little bit about the ketamine Queen, as it were. Now here's something I have put together for you to listen to, because I think this is very important, y'all. This is much more than just another exposed episode. There are a ton of people out there in society that are struggling with an addiction of some sort, be it drugs, alcohol, whatever. And one thing that I really respected about Matthew Perry was when he came out with that bug. He opened his self up, his most personal secrets to the world, and he did it in an effort to save someone else. It wasn't about the money.

12:09 He had money, tons of money, hell, friends, is still in syndication today. He didn't need money, even at the right that he was spending it. He didn't need money. This was about him wanting to help other people. That's why he wrote that book. But it's very hard to open up about, you know, your self, and things you might be ashamed of, as he did, and as he obviously was ashamed of this addiction. And probably one of the best interviews I ever heard was when Matthew Perry sat down with Diane Sawyer on ABC and They did that historic interview shortly after his book came out and disgusting detail his struggles with addiction. So I put that thing together for you. I'm gonna play it now. I think it's important that if you haven't heard it, that you hear it. And if you have heard it, you may enjoy hearing it again. It may have been a while for you. So here is Matthew Perry's interview with Diane Sawyer.

13:25 Home in Los Angeles. The door opens, Mom oh. S flair that Matthew really wonderful to see. Please find that. Matthew Perry says he loves waking up to the sun on the ocean. I just love the He is fifty three years old, but he knows most of us will always remember when we first saw him, one of those six young friends, creating a new kind of funny, a new kind of family. Okay, who watch light cheese? And who wants dark cheese? Which Humber being played by an actor who was effortlessly so fast, an original. Someone at work ate my sandwich for what did the police say?

14:08 And now it seems impossible that all those years ago, when we were laughing, we never knew that the young star was fighting for his life in a riptide of addiction. It was pulling him to Helen back over and over again, and he was trying to keep it a secret from everyone. Secrets kill you, Secrets kill people like me. Now Matthew Perry has put those secrets on the pages of a book. It is dedicated to other sufferers who, like him, might need help. It was important to me to do something that would help people. You sure know how to make people fasten their seatbelts. Oh good, nice, I'm glad you read it. Matthew Harriet.

14:51 One is everybody rolling, friends, love, and the Big Terrible Thing. You start with a thunderclap first page. Hi, my name is. Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Maddie, and I should be dead. Yeah that's definitely true. You say, Addiction. The big terrible thing is far too powerful for anyone to defeat alone. But together, one day at a time, we can beat it down. Yeah. Your disease is just outside, just during one arm push ups, just waiting, just waiting for you, waiting to get you alone, because alone you lose to the disease.

15:40 And now I finally feel okay and feel like I've got some strength. What does it mean to feel okay? It means that I've developed some safety nets around this. You know, we've all learned it's not ours to ask someone in recovery how long they've been sober their personal road toward the horizon. For a start, I've surrendered, but to the winning side, not losing. I'm no longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol, and helping others had become the answer for me for some reason. It's obviously because I was on friends, more people will listen to me, so I've got to take advantage of that. I've got to help as many people as I can.

16:29 He says. That's why he has written the harrowing details about his journey through alcohol, all those drugs, and the fight to break free. I want to just do it by the numbers, because you're sending postcards from hell to everyone out there who needs it. Six thousand AA meetings, therapy, thirty years, fifteen rehabs. Yeah, maybe at least half of your life in treatment or in sober living houses. He has been in detox, he estimates sixty five times, and as you'll hear later, he survived fourteen surgeries, once in a coma on life support.

17:13 One of the things I have to deal with is that my family rushed to the hospital and we're told that I have a two percent chance to make it through the night. And you know, my mom heard that, and my dad heard that. As he heals from all he's been through, there's still wearing tear on his voice and speech and the scars on his body, like a warrior back from battle. I once saw Martin Sheen at a podium and he said, I want to tell you a story about a guy who goes to Saint Peter's office. He dies, and he goes to Saint Peter's office and Saint Peter says, do you have any scars? And the man very proudly says no, I don't. And Saint Peter says, why was there nothing worth fighting for him? And I like hearing that.

18:03 Obviously, every day a new one. What's your dream day? A dream day? A dream day? So playing games, watching movies, I want to work out, I want to play pickle ball, but I play it almost every day. And that's why this tan is real and not fake. He even writes a chapter of gratitude for the beauty he now sees. There's beauty, coral reefs, brightly. Colored fish, spume. I don't know spume, who wrote it. It sounds I think disgusting, spume, like a foam on the ocean. I have to explain that to Princeton when I go talk to them.

18:53 So let's go back twenty eight years ago. Those actors, all in their twenties, on the brink of fame, about to change their lives forever. They are dancing around that fountain in the middle of the night and the water is freezing. That night was the water was very cold. Everybody is cold, but everybody is thrilled to be there. Lisa Kudro says, Matthew Perry was always the one trying to keep everyone else happy. Yeah, that's very nice. And that you kept everybody laughing. Liays, the funniest, maybe the funniest person I've ever worked, and just sees the world in a really funny way. And Maddie is hilarious, David Trim is hilarious, and a horse.

19:35 Courtney, she was the first to say, let's not compete, Let's be a real team. Courtney said this was on the second day of work, so we should all be an ensemble. And that sounded great. And Jennifer Aniston, they had met years earlier. Perry asked her out at a date. She said, no, let's be friends. You had one of your serial crushes. If I may say, yeah, I. Mean you really kind of chain crushed. I did, well, how do you not have a crush on Jenny and Courtney and Lisa? So it made it kind of difficult to go to work because I had to pretend that I didn't have these Yes, you writed the book. I was kept wondering, how long can I just look at her?

20:17 Yes? It was like three seconds too long? How long is? And then I write in the gratitude part about her letting me do that, because I'm sure she must have known. You write. As I was getting ready to get launch, there was a sound that you could hear, and it was the sound of people's dreams. The sound of people's dreams come true. I said, it sounded like a popping sound. Yeah. He said that there were six friends. One of them was sick. Yeah, coming up, Matthew. Perry has to face a friend and she says, oh, you're drinking.

21:02 Yeah. Imagine how scary him moment that was, oh my god, it's her. It's at Victoria's Secret Models. Matthew Perry looking back at scenes from Friends when everyone was having such a good time. I'm fine, No, I'm not alone. I don't know some guy. Yes he was some guy. I don't really watch the show. So that was really fun to look at. And they also loved cracking each other up in real life. Viz Are from the Outtics there when the team had its first breakout star David Shwimmer, he will not leave his other friends behind.

21:54 David Trimmer is the hot guy in the first year. I got the first movie and he came into my dress when we were about to renegotiate, and he said, I think we should negotiate together. I think and I said, great, idiot, that sounds great. Together they negotiate a new contract and they'll also have new terms. For a flashback, a redo of that fountain scene. This time it's different. And we were like warm the water. We're only going to be there for thirty minutes. We're not going to be dancing this time. We had all these rules because we were powerful. Then ultimately, as we know, their salaries will set a record by the last two seasons a million dollars per episode each. It is a fortune, and it takes us to a central question as we start this story, how does someone whose life is filled with so much luck and talent end up struggling so much with the disease of addiction, the fear, the shame, and hiding the cracks inside.

22:58 Perry says he proof that addiction can enter any home, any heart, even one with golden parents. Talk about glamorous parents, huh Yeah. His handsome dad is John Bennett Perry, a singer and actor and once the heart thrub of TV's Manliest Commercial. My father being the old spice guy. Yeah. Hard to bring girls home when that happens, because they're like really wanting to talk to my dad. His Canadian mother is the captivating, hard working press secretary to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. He set me up for being funny because I just loved her laugh so much. They're both people that take over a room, you know, when they come in.

23:47 But his very young parents had separated before he was a year old. They lived on opposite coasts and started new families. He remembers being that little boy giving away his mom to her new husband. He remembers when his dad marries a new wife. His stepparents are loving, he has wonderful new siblings. But for some reason, he said, as he grew up, he felt a kind of loneliness, never sure he was good enough to belong. If you try to map the fault lines underneath an addiction, you often find unanswerable questions. Perry says he does remember the day he thought he had found an answer. He's fourteen, with his Canadian pals and a common teenage rite of passage.

24:32 I remember that day very well. In Ottawa, Canada. I had never drank before, and I just sort of drank this entire bottle of what was called Anwar's Baby Duck, that was the name of the wine. And I lay in the grass and just was in heaven. And I thought to myself, this must be the way that normal people feel all the time. And I thought that. Of fourteen, his friends could drink and stop, but for him, the relief was so easy it became his destination. But you know, by the time I was eighteen, I was drinking. I was shrinking every day.

25:13 You were drinking alone at night. Yeah, I was drinking. At that time, I was drinking out with friends a lot, and then at one forty five, I would say, I'm going to go home and race across town to a liquor store, buy a bottle of vodka, and drink as much as I had with the other guys that night. A young man with a naive certainty that fame could fill up the hole inside you also write you found yourself getting on your knees, closing your eyes and pray God, you can do whatever you want to me, just please make me famous. Yeah. Yeah, And that was the first time I ever prayed, and I looked back at it as you know, a dumb prayer, like the prayer of like a really young person.

26:04 He moves to Los Angeles to live with his father, and since he likes school plays, he tries his hand acting for real. Quickly he gets TV roles act natural. Well, I guess I'll buy a lotto ticket. Buffs including an appearance on the hip Beverly Hills nine oh two one Ohero. That's really him. By the way, he was once a nationally ranked tennis player in Canada, and then at the age of twenty four, he arrives to audition for that show, which was then called Friends Like Us. He tells the creators about his anxiety and awkwardness with girls.

26:46 In the middle of that summer, they took us all separately to lunch and said, tell us about you, and I said, well, I'm not an ugly guy, but I have a lot of trouble with women. And that's what Chandler became. You know, you said, you also knew there was a mask on the pain, the. Character that couldn't stand silence, so he would make jokes. Hold on, no go, I've scared you. I've said too much. I'm hopeless and awkward and desperate for love. Thanks to his scene stealing charm, his prayer for fame has been answered. His hope to heal the hole inside was not.

27:27 And that was a dark day for me when I realized that it did not do that, that it did not fix what I thought was what I knew was broken. And now the added fear of being on a high wire with about twenty five million people watching, he says, his terror deepens, so does his loneliness and shame. Alone so I could drink drinking. Therefore, alone, I drink watch the movie pass Out wake up, drink, watch the movie, pass Out. But you had no trouble with the lines, You had no trouble with the timing, you had no trouble showing up every day.

28:08 Early on, Yes, and I made a rule that I would never drink or take anything at work, so I would never do that. But I would show up blindly hungover, like shaking and crazy, hungover. But still somehow brilliant on camera, maybe because he's an athlete and young and cares so much well. I loved Chandler. I love the show. And I also knew, remember this because it's going to be the best time of your life. And I knew it. I couldn't tell my family, I couldn't tell anybody because they would possibly ask me to stop. I knew that I would never forgive myself if I missed this up.

28:54 And remember all those years ago, addiction was even more in the shadows before so much any famous people started telling their stories, And soon Matthew Perry's secret is going to take an even darker turn, as you'll hear the introduction of pills. But at some point along the path, his friends reach out. Kenny and she says, we know you're drinking. Yeah, imagine how scary a moment that was. And I said, how I thought I was hiding it so well? And she said, we can smell it, and we can smell it, but I wasn't in a position to stop, you know, And that's what addiction is. But she was the one that reached out the most, you know. Really grateful to her for that.

29:45 At another point, caston creators of the show come into his dressing room. They said, what are you doing? Why are you acting this way? What's going on? We know there's a problem with you. And I said, I'm on medication. I'm really sorry. It won't happen again. In nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguin group around it and prop it up until it's better. This is what my co stars on Friends did for me. It is the year two thousand and an incredible feat. Matthew Perry now has the number one movie in America, The Whole Nine Yards, made with one of his screen heroes, Bruce Willis.

30:27 It's been good. I'm glad we got to know each other. You know what, me too. You can go to Frank. And at the same time, the movie is soaring He's still the star of the number one sitcom on TV. It's the time I should have been the toast of the town. Michael J. Fox did it. He had the number one TV show, on the number one movie. But I think it's just us. And I was in a dark room meeting with nothing but drug dealers and completely alone for months.

31:10 The spiral into prescription drugs has begun. He has a memory of the first pill as indelible as the first teenage drink long ago. And I was doing fine. This afternoon. He was making a movie called Fools Rush In, and during a lunch break he was playing around on a jet Ski has an injury. He's given a pill for the pain and says it was like warm honey entering his veins. I swear to God, I think if I'd never taken it, none of the next three decades would have gone the way they did. Who knows, But when I woke up, forty more pills had been delivered to my house. They were Vicodin. He tells himself, maybe he can curb his drinking if he uses pills to tame his fear and self doubt. More pills of many kinds that take over with a vengeance.

31:57 I've been taking something like twelve a day and then went cold turkey one day and felt absolutely terrible. Because addiction is the obsession of your mind. Now give me everything you gave me before and more. That's what happens. His body has built up such a tolerance. He takes more pills to stave off withdrawal, and then horrifyingly. More fifty five like in a day, which is where I was fifty five. Yeah, how did you get fifty five a day? Well, I had to wake up and realized that I needed to get fifty five of them or I was going to be really sick. So I did all sorts of things. So I had a bunch of doctors, fake migraines and all that stuff.

32:43 You take mri eyes. I did take m eyes just to get the pills. Yeah, there was nothing wrong with me. And I guess the weirdest thing I did was on Sundays, I would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms in the so in the open house and see what pills they had in there and steal them. And I think they thought, well, there's no way that Chandler came in and stole from us. And so seven years into Friends, his double life is about to spen out of control. He goes off to make a movie called Serving Sarah. He is even on the treatment drug methadone to stave off withdrawal from vigadin, but he's doubling down on everything else. But you're a methadone XENX full court of Vodka day. At one point, a doctor shows up.

33:36 I had drunk a party sized bottle of vodka, the one with the handle on it. When the doctor looked around the room, he saw the bottle and said, in a nervous voice, did you drink all of that? Yes? I said, May I have the valume every four hours, not every six? With that, he turned tail and ran top speed down the spiral staircase and out the door, presumably so he wouldn't actually be in the room. If Matthew Perry. Died disaster on the movie set. Perry is now incapacitated by all the drugs and alcohol. The whole movie has to shut down. Nurse, did you bring the tools?

34:17 Later, he has to dub in the lines when he's sober. She forgot the tools. Can't really do anything without the tools. It's slurring my dialogue with Sean and Dallas, and I was doing friends at the same time, so doubled my workload, and I was flying on a private jet drinking a vodka of water bombing. A girlfriend says something that startles him. I think you're disappearing, and then I went, oh, stop everything. I'm going to rehab right now. Stop the movie, Stop everything. His father and mother have been worried for years, and at this point, his father steps in to make sure his son will spend a full ninety days in rehab.

34:59 First that grueling detox in a past twenty had a grandma seizure. Detox is hell. Detox is lying in bed watching the seconds go by. My insides feel like they're trying to crawl out of my body. I'm shaking and sweating. I'm begging like a child for any kind of medication that will help ease the symptoms. Yeah, I mean, detox is hell. You know there is a hell. I know. I can says tangible features, I can describe it. And I would make the decision to have like five six hours of being high and knowing that six days of that was coming, and I would make that decision over and over and over.

35:47 Again back on the set, everyone so afraid for the friend who's in a giant battle at Lista writes on your forward that they wanted so much to do the right thing, but they didn't know what it was. They didn't know if there was something they could have said, should have done. That was the truth for my family too and me. In two thousand and four, I asked Jennifer Anniston about all her colleagues, including Matthew, whose struggle had become public as his friends grappled too. What doesn't Matthew know that he's all right?

36:28 We didn't know. We you know, we weren't equipped. We weren't to deal with it. You know, nobody had ever dealt with with hat And you know, what's the idea of even losing him? Or so Now, let's go back and look again to something we were seeing on screen but never fully recognized. Matthew Perry clearly changing from season to season, signaling something is wrong. He writes this in his book, 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.

37:14 He writes about the scenes that remind him how he was just barely holding on. He needed the pills to function, but the pills destroy appetite and cause deep nausea. I ask him if it was okay for us to look at one of those scenes together. Sure, a scene in which he is painfully thin, shirt hanging off his body. Wait a minute, I know that hat. I was taking aboard that hat. They do experiments on me. I can't have children. Yeah, of course, it's very hard to watch that because, in this weird way, I feel I feel sorry for that guy, because that's a guy that's out of control. I didn't know what was going on with me.

38:17 I weighed one hundred and fifty five pounds, so on my weigh to one hundred and twenty eight pounds. But I feel too sorry for that guy. He's going through too much and it's me and I remember that, and I didn't understand what was going on. But again, I'm sorry, and I'm so grateful to not be that anymore. But it's it's hard. It's hard to watch. But whenever I was writing the book and I came to a section that was hard, I just thought, however, deep it went for me and dark, it went for me. That will help somebody who got that dark and I kept going.

39:17 Today, Matthew Perry says life is filled with a lot of favorite things, including the toffee pudding. He says he's saved to reward himself after getting through this interview with me. After your interview, I might be scared and I want something to eat. He says he has great friends and people around him who help make sure he is never fighting alone. He also says he's finally learning more about himself, including his old awkwardness with girls. He still hopes to start a family and find the girl of his dreams online dating. I have done that, you did have done that. I went on this one. I to go, I did go, and I and then I rapidly stopped because it was stupid.

39:58 And he says he's broken an old pattern with relationships. It was a combination of feeling like I wasn't enough, feeling like I was needy, feeling like it didn't matter, And so I'd be in relationships that were going great with wonderful women, wonderful women, smart, funny, wonderful women, and my sub conscious I got scared. I would get scared and break up with them because I was afraid that if they found out those three things about me, they would break up with me, and that would annihilate me.

40:40 He says, thanks to therapy, he's learned to trust that he doesn't have to keep a woman laughing to keep her in his life. I know what that is now, and I don't suffer from it anymore. Making Jenny laugh was a great thing. Making my mother laugh was a great thing, and yeah, that's what It lights me up and make somebody laugh, you know. But I don't have to do that now. Back as the series Friends is heading toward its final years, he is committed to that rehab for a full three months. He's being driven from rehab every morning to the set of Friends and experience his life as it might have been. Yeah. I was driven in a blue, big blue pickup truck to marry Manicah from a treatment center.

41:28 Can we watch the scene I. Love you. And he surprises to come our way. It's okay, because I will always love you. You are the person I was meant to spend the rest of my life with. You want to know if I'm sure you may now kiss the bride? That's pretty good. I'll watch that scene over and over. That was good. I looked good sober, I did well. That's fun to watch, thank you. I mean, right there, you see Chandler overtaking where I was in my life, you know, and that was a little weird marriage and then kids and I'm you know, not doing any of that stuff, and that was pretty weird.

42:27 He's even nominated for an Emmy after ten years the series is ending. The end of Friends meant the end of an era, you know, and work like that was going to be hard to find. But I was sober, and I stayed sober for a pretty long time. You know. There's a lot of times that I've been sober for two years and then two years here, and then one year and then six months. But then I started to think, I've got this. I don't need to learn anymore. I don't need to go to meetings this anymore. I know this a trapdoor. Over the next year's Perry will earn three more Emmy nominations, appearing on shows like The West Wing.

43:09 I don't get a vote in the US House of Representatives, but I do go to the grocery store. I know that food is cheaper and I know that when life expectancy goes up, that's not victimizing undertakers. And then something happened. I was able to stay sober unless anything happened, good or bad. And something happened I don't even remember what, and I took pills over it, and the insanity of that and starting the addiction all over again. By twenty eighteen, his worn down body is about to pay a huge price. All the years and quantities of the pills he was using paralyzed his digestive system. Four years ago, an emergency, a fight for his life.

43:52 I was rushed to the hospital because I was in intense pain in my stomach, and by the time I got to the hospital, I was writhing on the ground. They put me on a stretcher and they ran me into the emergency trauma room. And it was in there that my colon exploded. There was a perforation of the bowel, pneumonia, intubation, a temporary colostomy bag. He's put on life support. I was put on an ECMO machine, and an ECMO machine when you talk to anti doctor is a hail Mary is the last thing that you do before people die.

44:38 And there were five people that night that were put on ECMO machine, and I was the only one who survived. He was in a coma for fourteen days. I woke up and I said, what's happening. What's happening. My mother was in the room, and she told me what was going on. And I was in that hospital for five months, and you know, escaped death really narrowly. And in those five months, no one left you alone. I was never alone in that room. My family was there. His step parents, his siblings, his friends. Keep watch. He plays the song Don't give Up.

45:24 Sure, Yeah, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. Yeah. I listened to that song a lot, and. He remembers looking up at one point to a rare reunion the golden parents he loves. They are together. They were both standing at the edge of my bed, and I was like, WHOA, I must be really sick for this to be happening. In the months after surgery, it will not be a straight path to sobriety, as somehow he endures a total of fourteen surgeries, the latest this year, not to mention all the excruciating dental emergencies that required surgeries too. He says he had one of those surgeries before he filmed The Friends Reunion and to the people maybe for whom the last time they saw he was the Friends Reunion, who were really worried.

46:13 A couple of days before that, I had an emergency dental surgery which did all sorts of things, and the dental surgery just made my mouth feel like fire and it sounded like my voice was off. I couldn't not show up. So what I chose to do was go and just do the best that I could. Since then, he's been writing his book about a hard earned sober life and the most important message you have to keep trying. What I kept thinking was, Okay, why why was I spared when these other four people passed away? And every doctor in the world says that person should be dead.

47:02 So I thought, you know, there's a reason. There's got to be a reason that I'm here. When someone calls you for help and says I'm in trouble, what do you want to say to them? First? I say, come over, let's talk. A guy coming up to me and saying can you help me stop drinking? And I can say yes and follow up and help the person, and I see the light come on in their eyes, and I have the answer. Because of stumbling so much, I can help them so saving each other, saving each other, because he eventually figures out that he's saving me too. During COVID, we will all Rewatching Friends Take the rais ninety seven billion minutes of it watched in twenty twenty alone.

47:51 I'm not great at the advice, and I anterest you want a sarcastic comment. The fans are paying tribute as they always have for decades, to the hairstyle, the clothes. I need to lie down, the way they talk. How did you teach yourself English? Actually? My English teacher was sick. Friends? Does it surprise you the whole it still has what is Friends? Yeah, it does surprise me that it's gone on so long that people still love it. And you know, in London. I was in London recently and there were people like outside my hotel room, like screaming, and I went out and waved to them. I was like Marilyn Monrou or something.

48:33 And when the tennis playing star of Friends showed up at the US Open this year, the champion from Poland was starstruck. The winner of the US Open tweeted that the thing that made her. The most nervous was that I was in the stands. Today, Matthew Perry is working on a screenplay and going on a book tour to tell his story, and he says, looking for new ways to help the millions of other people who are struggling. How is your health now? Yeah, my health is good. My mouth is good. I'm doing really well. Now. How hard is each day? Now? It's not that hard. I have a lot of experience. Now, which is why he says, keep fighting. Every time you seek help, you can learn something that strengthens you.

49:16 He still remembers a counselor from his first rehab. I was walking out and he said, and remember, it's not your fault. And I went what? And he said this, all of this is not your fault. And I went, what do you talk to say that again? And that was the first time I realized that all of this insanity, it wasn't my will, or wasn't what I wanted, or it was not my fault. And another life raft in the middle of this disease, in a dark time, he sees a strange golden light. And it was telling me that I'm accepted and I'm loved and everything's going to be okay. And I called my sponsor after it was over. It was about seven minutes long, and I said, this just happened to me.

50:06 And he said, that's as real as the couch you're sitting on. Just know that and save my life. You say, And a light has been shown, as if to a desperate man who needs help, the same light that hits the ocean in the sunlight and the beautiful gold water glistening. Yeah, because people who don't believe in that, I'd like to tell them to go stop a wave or go make a plant. The interview is winding down the work of his new life, just gearing up. I've got to help as many people as I can. This isn't fun, you know, you're very nice and being interviewed.

50:48 But he was great. But like, it's so fun to talk about this stuff. I don't like talking about it, but I know it's going to help people to talk about it. I know the book is going to hap people. I'm very happy to have spent this time with you. And you know this, I think probably, but you know, every single person says, tell him he's got us with him. Oh yeah, thank you. I'm very grateful for that. Okay, we'll do it again, and yeah, let's do it again tomorrow. Oh yeah, only different. Yeah, but ask the same questions.

51:32 And before we leave, there's a question he saw me ask once before of someone else in recovery. He thinks it's interesting, so I ask him to how will we know when you're in trouble and you're not? Okay? If I say I'm just going to chill alone at home tonight and partoon. If the other thing is, if I ever say I'm cured and spin, it.

52:18 Could have had a historic ending of. The Well that's not me. And there you have it, and I'll keep you posted on this case. It'll probably be a while before anything progresses any further and we start having trials and all that. If there are trials, most of these people will probably plea bargain. But I will keep you up to date on it. And until next time for exposed scandalous files of the elite, I'm your host, Jim Chapman. Much love, M