Matthew Perry reveals he went to open houses to steal pills from medicine cabinets amid addiction struggles
Updated
Adam Perry’s life is on the skids. His addictions have pushed him off the path of recovery and into full-time incarceration.
As a young man living in Sydney’s south-west, Mr Perry was a drug dealer and alcoholic. He tried to start a business by selling drugs to friends but soon fell into a downward spiral.
When he sought help for his addictions in 2013 he discovered he was HIV positive and had contracted Hepatitis C.
As he became more entrenched in his addiction, he began to go to local pharmacies and stealing prescription medication from their shelves in order to fuel his habit.
Mr Perry said he thought people shouldn’t go to the expense of having prescribed medicine on top of their other medication, so he stole to ease his addiction.
“I would go to open houses and try and steal anything I could and stuff, things like coke and ecstasy and heroin,” he said.
“I was like yeah this is good then I’m trying to kill myself because I’ve got to get that stuff in me,” he said.
“My brain was like, oh no I can’t do that, that’s way more trouble.”
As his addiction grew, he began spending more time outside. Instead of sleeping, Mr Perry would spend the night in his car.
“I’m just always trying to keep a level head and stay positive but you just keep going, going, going, going,” he said.
“Eventually you turn to some sort of drugs to escape you have a mental illness, that’s your escape from reality.”
As he became more entrenched in his addiction, he began spending more time outside.
“I’d run out of the house and walk down the street and then sleep out in my car,” he said
“[My] world was always a tiny house, a tiny apartment, having to live with my parents, you know, the drugs was a way out of that.”
He began to feel the weight of his addiction and started spending more time in jail.
“When I was jailed and in my mental state, I was like a criminal, the person I felt like,” he said.
“I thought ‘I could go out and sell my drugs, I could go walk on
