By Joe Schrank — 28 Years Sober, Not Dead, and Still Showing Up
So Matthew Perry’s doctor pleaded guilty. The media’s breathless with the news. “The man who gave Chandler Bing his pills!” It’s tempting to see this as some clean little morality tale: reckless prescriber, tragic addict, lesson learned. But addiction isn’t a story you can wrap in a bow and posthumously hand to the public with a stern warning. And it sure as hell isn’t fixed by handcuffs and courtrooms.
Let’s be clear: if you’re a doctor writing scripts for controlled substances under fake names, that’s a crime. Period. Dr. Feelgood here deserves every consequence the law allows. But if we stop there—if we make him the scapegoat—we’re missing the entire goddamn point.
If we really want to assign blame, let’s be accurate. We’re all to blame—the entire dysfunctional American family. The one that lives in denial and pretends we will someday incarcerate our way out of addiction or that with enough cruelty at the southern border, people will stop using drugs. Bitch, please. If we’re all to blame—and we are—then we all have to participate in the solution.
America has always tried to control addiction by controlling supply. It’s a strategy older than disco and dumber than Twitter. We blamed Chinese immigrants for opium, jazz musicians for reefer, and now we’re back to blaming doctors for opioids. The pendulum always swings from overprescribing to overcorrecting, like a drunk trying to walk a straight line. It never lands on actual care.
Matthew Perry was not a victim of one man in a white coat. He was a man with a chronic, relapsing brain condition that hijacks your logic, shreds your relationships, and convinces you that the only way to feel okay is to slowly die. He knew that. He wrote about it, talked about it, and lived it every day. This is a man who spent millions trying to get better, who opened a sober living house for others. He wasn’t clueless. He was in pain.
But when we assign all the blame to the doctor, we erase something crucial: recovery only works when we take personal responsibility. No one can make you get better. They can help—God knows we all need help—but no intervention, no rehab, no pill, no sponsor can save you if you’re not willing to face yourself in the mirror and say, “I have to do this work.”
Blame culture is easy. It’s so much easier to blame a dealer, a doctor, a dad, the Democrats, the cartel, the curse of celebrity. It’s a lot harder to confront the messy, brutal truth that addiction is a deeply human struggle, and humans make decisions—bad ones, heartbreaking ones, sometimes fatal ones. That doesn’t mean we abandon compassion. It means we stop pretending people are puppets with pills pulling the strings.
What happened to Matthew Perry is a tragedy, not a whodunit. And while the doctor bears responsibility, we all need to remember that addiction is never just about supply. If we want to reduce harm, we need better mental health care, honest education, harm reduction options, and compassionate accountability—not just another perp walk and a shrug.
Let the doctor take his medicine. But let’s not pretend that justice here means we’re anywhere closer to solving the actual crisis. If you want to train for a marathon, the shoes have to fit. The same goes for recovery. No one-size-fits-all. No easy villains. Just people trying to find a way out.