The Unbearable Sadness of the Matthew Perry Court Texts

I keep coming back to the incredibly sad text that was filed in the court documents of Matthew Perry’s death.

In a discussion that one of the defendants has with another about the amount to charge Perry for the drug ketamine, which he had grown rapidly dependent upon, the individual writes: “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”

That voice of cruelty and dismissal occurs in a variety of relationships, mostly those that are lopsided, where the power differential is skewed. This is the case here with one person wanting drugs, and on a larger scale with the opioid crisis where millions became dependent, still suffer, or have died. Craving or needing something forces people into compromising positions. But that’s only part of it. It also breeds contempt in the very people who “fulfill” those wants, typically for their own gain. Three more words from the texts in the court documents prove this point: “Let’s find out.”

Perry was public and self-deprecating about his addictions, which he wrote about in his memoir. But even if he hadn’t been famous—and many who struggle with addiction aren’t—those first eight words are a searing indictment of the cruelty of an unbalanced interaction, and that’s putting it kindly. These “relationships” are transactional, be they about drugs or love, sex, money, or fame. These interactions lead to disgust, resentment, judgment, and disregard for another human being.

This type of behavior is—obviously—seeped in clouded judgment and a warped view of one’s role and rights. And in some cases, like this one, it can be deadly.

The courts sometimes take care of the legal aspects, as we see with Perry’s case, which is still moving through the system.

I’ve been writing about this for years and continue to explore the topic, most recently about the parents of highly dependent adult children who fail to launch, which grew out of a viral post I wrote. This imbalance assumes many forms and disguises and occurs even with people who are loved.

In my clinical work, I observed that unchecked behavior like this disables everyone and leads to a bitter dismissiveness of another human being (again, that text message). You can love the person, as with a parent to a child. Or you can feed off the wealth of the celebrity and at the same time resent them in the process for their weaknesses, which, of course, is all in the eyes of the beholder.

It's widely believed that the person with the addiction is the only person who can decide to pursue sobriety. The same goes for the other party, the one catering to the “fulfilling” dangerous needs, wreaking havoc in the process. The only person who can decide to pursue their own "sobriety" from this behavior is them, and we can only hope that more people will realize it before they, too, deplete the agency of an individual, or the soul of another, as well as their own.