Four years ago, Matthew Perry knew he had a problem with Vicodin, a common painkiller he started taking after a snowmobile accident." My life had gotten to a point where I was getting sick if I didn't take that pill," he told US weekly last November.
Two weeks ago, Perry was in trouble again - serious, potentially life-threatening trouble - and the 31-year-old actor knew it. On Friday morning, February 23, according to a well-placed source, Perry, in Dallas to shoot his latest movie, the comedy Servicing Sarah, was suffering stomach pains so severe he called a local doctor to his hotel room, and the doctor, apparently familiar with Perry and his problems, advised him to go to rehab. Later that night, the Friends star was met by his father, actor John Perry, and a private rehab specialist, who checked him in to Marina Del Rey's Daniel Freeman Hospital, where he began detox. According to sources, the actor was riding a pharmaceutical roller coaster. Vicodin, methadone and speed. "He was keeping up a demanding schedule, spending half the week in L.A. and half in Dallas," says a source. "He was taking certain medications that made him drowsy, and then someone gave him speed to get him through his work. He was really trying, poor guy, but he didn't have a chance."
Perry, says a source, was also drinking, even though he spent two weeks in the hospital last summer with pancreatitis, a serious stomach ailment that can be brought on by alcohol and drug abuse. "In my case it was hard living, hard drinking and eating poorly," he acknowledged last November. "You play, you pay."
As Perry, once a junior tennis champion in his native Canada, discovered last week, this price is steep, even for someone whose prime-time gig pays him $16.5 million a year. "Vicodin is five to seven days of detox," says addiction consultant Betty Wyman. "Methadone detox can be 10 days to two weeks, and you feel aching and pain into your bones."
But Perry didn't get to this point by himself. The obvious question is, how could someone who has publicly battled addiction to prescription painkillers and alcohol get his hands on the drug that sent him to rehab for 28 days in 1997? "Hollywood's full of Dr. Feelgoods," says top L.A. addiction specialist Dallas Taylor. "This is the crime. Whoever kept giving him these prescriptions should go to jail." A well-known actor says that all it takes is a little cash and clout to get drugs flowing. "If you're a star in Hollywood and are willing to pay $500 a visit in cash, you can get anything you want - anytime."
Vicodin - part narcotic, part acetaminophen - is one of the most prescribed painkillers in the United States. Some claim it's the most abused as well, and Perry may have succumbed to what is presently considered a full-fledged fact. "In many ways, it's the equivalent of what Quaaludes were years ago," says Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Mark Goulston. Relatively inexpensive (about $50 for a bottle of 100 pills) and easy to get, not to mention legal if prescribed by a doctor, Vicodin has emerged as the drug of choice in Hollywood, as much a part of daily life for many celebrities as valet parking and Motorola pagers. "Who isn't doing them?" says rocker Courtney Love. "Everyone who makes it starts popping them. It's the new LSD - lead singer's drug. I know three leads singers doing Vicodin right now. I did it. I loved it. I also ended up in rehab."
Such cautionary advice needs to be taken seriously. Aside from Perry and Love, Melanie Griffith, Nikki Taylor, Brett Butler, Johnny Cash and Foxy Brown are among those who have gone public with their addictions. "I just flat out nearly died," Butler told the Los Angeles Times last August, and Michael Jackson also struggled with a dependency on painkillers. "Addiction to prescribed pain pills can happen to anyone," Griffith said three months ago, while detecting from painkillers that had been originally prescribed for a neck injury. "You have to be careful."
It's easy to get hooked, as Butler, the former star of the successful ABC sitcom Grace Under Fire, found out several years ago when she was prescribed painkillers for sciatica, a nerve condition in the hip and thigh. Soon, the 43-year-old actor says, she was addicted to "everything. I wasn't doing heroin, and I think I drank twice, but I was into a lot of drugs." Vicodin's high is especially seductive. "It's smooth and sweet," says Love.
Television personality Ben Stein recalls how in the early 1990s he was given painkillers after minor dental surgery. "I remember vividly getting the prescriptions filled, getting on the freeway and 20 minutes later thinking, I feel so great, I love this." Stein says and then adds: "Bet it interfered with my thinking, so I couldn't do it any longer."
Long-time Vicodin users often enhance the sensation with alcohol, a dangerous combination that can shut down the respiratory system, experts say. But for most people who abuse the drug, a pill or two is a neat, efficient and undetectable escape. "In a nutshell, it takes away pain and agitation and gives you a temporary feeling of peacefulness mixed with euphoria," says Goulston. "It's the equivalent of taking legalised heroin," adds Taylor.
Hip-hop superstar Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, has touted the drug as a symbol of cool, getting one pill tattooed on his upper left arm sometime in the mid-1990s and also depicting a Vicodin tablet on the artwork of his 1999 debut CD, The Slim Shady LP, which sold 4 million copies. Does Mathers himself take Vicodin? Sources close to the rapper told US weekly that the 28-year-old Matthers has used the drug. "I told him that if he didn't stop taking those pills, his stomach would get all torn up," one source says. "Em told me he was pissing and sh--ing blood." Mathers's spokesman Dennis Dennehy, says his client "has mentioned [Vicodin] in songs and stuff, but other than that, I can't confirm or deny that he has or hasn't used the drug."
Still, the drug's popularity in Hollywood surpassed any need for a poster boy long ago. "I did a movie a couple of years ago, and I got a migraine," recalls an assistant director. "The producer walked in and said, 'I need you on the set. Take one of these, and it will make you feel better.' He had a bag of Vicodin that looked like a bag of M & Ms. He told me that he'd gone through, like, 5,000 of them since filming started."
Three days after Perry voluntarily checked himself into rehab; a well-known female rocker with a Vicodin habit entered the Cry Help rehab facility in the San Fernando Valley. "She was taking 60 pills a day," says Cry Help's Kathy Kjeldgaard, regarded as the best detox nurse in L.A.
"She'd been using for seven years.
"She began taking after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia," a musculoskeletal pain and fatigue disorder that's hard to confirm or refuse. "She got a doctor to say she had it." Kjeldgaard says, "and he gave her Vicodin. She liked it immediately, and soon she was hooked. She knew it, too. She was going to several doctors at a time to keep up her 60-pill-a-day-habit. She paid them cash and filled the scripts at different pharmacies."
Hers is an increasingly common story. "I know a lot of the celebrity population is using," says addiction consultant Wyman. "If they're drinking and smoking pot, why not pop pills, too? Vicodin in particular is easier to access than other opiates. You don't have to score on the street. A lot of doctors will prescribe it for back problems or dental surgery."
"Some doctors say it's easier to write a prescription than to hear a patient whine." says Kjeldgaard. "For other doctors, it's a way to keep up business. And others don't know any better. I've heard of patients going in and asking for 100 pills. When the doctor says they can't do that, the patient pulls out a $100 bill, and they get their prescription. It's downright frightening."
The demand for Vicodin has made it easy to obtain even without a prescription. "There are just as many dirty pharmacies as there are dirty doctors," says Taylor. "They sell directly to movie stars and rock stars. It's all under the table."
Back in 1997, Perry's problem may have started innocently enough, from a combination of pain and overwork, as he spit his time between his sitcom Friends and the movie Almost Heroes. "He had a physical problem, a back ailment," says a crew member from that film. "I also know for a fact that for at least 90 days straight, the guy didn't have a day off. Because of their schedule, a lot of times actors don't have the option to get their knee operated on and rake several weeks off to recover. So they turn to pills to get through it, and then, guess what, they're hooked.
These days, rehab clinics around Los Angeles are full of Vicodin victims like Perry. "We have had a steady stream of people seeking help for the drug for the past few years.," says Daniel Freeman's recovery physician Dr. Michael Shwayder. "The last four relapses I've seen are from Vicodin," adds Taylor.
Kicking the habit can be a nightmare. "It's gnarly," says Wyman. The female musician who checked into Cry Help was brought down by medications, which were tapered off after three days. "For a good Vicodin habit like hers, you need 10 days to detox," says Kjeldgaard. "Then they need to get into a rehab program. If they don't they will get loaded again."
As for Perry, following detox, he planned to a private facility for an undisclosed length of time. It wasn't clear how he would fulfil his commitment to Friends or finish work on Servicing Sara. "Right now, he's taking care of more important business," says a source. Perry would probably say the same, if that much. "I don't like talking about what I went through," he told US weekly about his previous stint in rehab. "I like to be funny in interviews, and there's nothing funny about it."