This past week Matthew Perry died at 54. This New York Times article said “It seems to have been hard for Perry. “I wanted to be famous so badly,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be.”

I pay attention to celebrities with problems with drugs and alcohol because I am a non-celebrity who had a problem with alcohol. There’s nothing yet to indicate that drugs or alcohol played a part in Perry’s death, but I notice. In fact, when I got the news about Perry I was reading an old article about the death of James Gandolfini, another talented artist who struggled with addiction and died young at 51, ten years ago. I remember because we were the same age.

“If a little is good, more is better.” That’s something I heard when I got sober, it was meant as a joke, but I was confused, because I didn’t think it was ironic, I thought it was real. Like, doesn’t everyone think that way?

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