Submitted by Terrible_Vermicelli1 t3_11tgk2j in books
Could you be any more delusional and self-serving as this man? I loved him in Friends and for a long time was feeling very sympathetic towards him and his struggles, addiction can get to the best of people and I do admire those who keep fighting. But this book was something else. A blatant lack of self-awareness, narcissism and inflated ego was just too much.
This is the man, who admits he cheated on basically each of his girlfriends, yet at the same time thinks "he's a very good person, he would never hurt anyone and God can see this".
This is the man who hurt and drove away those who helped him the most, those who spent months with him in hospitals and rehabs, risking their careers and private lives, and suddenly were disposable when he was discharged because "as long as I'm sober, I don't need them any more and now they're needy".
This is the man who constantly shits on every person more successful than him. Who thinks that every bad thing that happened to him must be the fault of someone else. That he's not even in the slightest responsible for how his life looks like, because "it's a disease, and you're lucky you don't have it, woe is me, I don't have any control over it". Who destroyed so many movies because of his addiction, and once just disappeared for 6 months during the production to go on a binge and later detox, and is in absolute shock they sued him for financial loses. "How could they, it was health issue??". Who hurt every woman he's every been with, but when his ex (!) informs him she's getting married and won't be able to attend his play he says "her emailing me about it is the worst thing someone has done to me, I would NEVER do that to a person, how could she". The whole book is just constant self-serving "me, myself and I, why everyone around me is always wrong and why all I did to myself and other people is not my fault". I was physically ill by the end of this book.
The narcissism is so obvious it's not even funny. Early in his career his supposed friend rejected role of Chandler, which he obviously later regretted seeing how it played out for Matthew. What Perry has to say about it? He just randomly quotes a journalist saying that it was a blessing to the world it was Perry who was cast and that his friend would be a shitty Chandler anyway. Who the hell would do something like that to a friend? Did you just kept this quote memorized for 20+ years or went out of your way to locate any negative comment about your friend to include this in your memoir? Absolutely shocking. More on narcissism - he writes his first play in 10 days and self proclaims it as "great work better than classics" and gets all annoyed that it was demolished by critics. Did it ever occur to him that maybe it wasn't that good and he could work on it more? Of course not, critics just don't understand his genius, and besides, here's one semi-positive review he found - proceeds to quote it in its entirety. Yes, quoting passages praising Matthew Perry takes quite big portion of this book.
As for his addiction, this is something that happens to him against his will, he would love to trade places even with homeless or broke people, they don't get how hard he got it in life with his addicted brain. He'd love to stop, but when even the slightest hardship happens in his life, he just has to drink or use. It's just how his body works, not his fault, you're lucky if you don't have this disease. People who overcame addiction? Oh, they had it easy, easier version, easier to overcome, lucky bastards. He's one of the few that got the hardest version and he's a hero for living with it every day.
I could go on, but let's stop here. If this was a work of fiction, I'm certain people would find it almost unbelievable. You can't be that dense and oblivious to all of your faults, this is just bad writing. But here we are - the person who carefully made sure to only surround himself with yes-men is unable to see or admit he is the only constant in every situation that he messed up. What a surprise. Good luck with sobriety with the attitude of constant whining and looking for others to blame, you'll need that, Matthew.