We can learn a lot from Matthew Perry’s memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” Is it your story?
Matty, as his “friends” called him, leaves a message for all of us. This includes communities, governments, treatment organizations, and individuals.
I said it’s a sad tale. That’s an understatement. He just wanted to feel “different.” He didn’t want to die. He begged and prayed for help.
Did the system betray him? Is it malpractice by treatment providers? Is it moral failure? Alcohol? Addiction?
We need tighter controls; more governance is this field.
Using since the age of 14, he spent $9M on 15 rehab stints over about 29 years, and then, addiction killed him.
He spent more time in sober living. He claimed over 10,000 hours of AA meetings.
He wrote that he felt most treatment organizations were simply a money grab. He could afford the best like some of those mentioned in Newsweek’s top 350 treatment providers.
He does not speak well of them overall. “My own experience,” he wrote, “…led me to believe that most of these places are pieces of s***…” (Friend, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing, Flatiron Books, Matthew Perry, pp180-181.)
Talk about beliefs.
On my second reading of the book, I still cannot find proof that he ever changed his permission-granting beliefs about using alcohol and other drugs. They were in his system when he died.
There is no proof that anyone showed him how to identify and change his limiting, permission-granting addiction beliefs.
My opinion is that teaching belief change is the number one priority for providers. If nothing changes, nothing changes.
Change work must be emphasized above all. Matty was not paying for reports and documents. He didn’t care about billing. “I didn’t want to die.” (p. 164, he tells us now, from the hereafter.
He just wanted to feel better. He wanted someone to help him
with his sadness to fill the holes of abandonment. He wanted to change.
Did standard treatment protocols get in the way of change work?
If nothing changes, nothing changes. We need to help people like Matthew Perry change. That starts with helping them change their CTC permission-granting addiction beliefs as Beck stated.
“Nothing had ever worked LONG TERM before,” he wrote, (P. 168.)
“There will be no long-term behavior changes unless you change core beliefs first,” according to Wanberg and Milkman. Albert Ellis showed us how with his ABC-DE Theory.
That’s what Belief Eye Movement Therapy, BEMT, is all about. The primary purpose of BEMT is to help people like Matthew to elicit, recognize and change unwanted, limiting, permission-granting beliefs that will kill them.
The primary goal is change work. Paperwork and billing will follow.
“Message me” if you want to learn how to do BEMT for you or your clients. We can do live staff trainings, Zoom, or any combination.