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      The One Where Matthew Perry Writes an Addiction Memoir

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      BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — When I pictured Matthew Perry, the actor frequently known as Chandler Bing, I saw him on the tangerine couch at Central Perk or seated on one of the twin recliners in the apartment he shared with Joey Tribbiani.In September, after arriving at his 6,300-square-foot rental house and being ushered through a driveway gate by his sober companion, I sat across from Perry, who perched on a white couch in a white living room, a world away from “Friends,” the NBC sitcom that aired for 10 seasons and catapulted all six of its stars into fame, fortune and infinite memes. Instead of the foosball table where Chandler, Joey, Monica, Phoebe, Rachel and Ross gathered, nudging each other through the first chapters of adulthood, Perry, 53, had a red felt pool table that looked untouched. There was plenty of light in the house, but not a lot of warmth.I have watched every episode of “Friends” three times — in prime time, on VHS and on Netflix — but I’m not sure I would have recognized Perry if I’d seen him on the street. If he was an ebullient terrier in those 1990s-era Must See TV days — as memorable for his full-body comedy as he was for the inflection that made “Can you BE any more [insert adjective]” the new “Gag me with a spoon” — he now seemed more like an apprehensive bulldog, with the forehead furrows to match.As his former co-star Lisa Kudrow confesses in the foreword to his memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” the first question people ask about “Friends” is often “How’s Matthew Perry doing?”Perry answers that question in the book, which Flatiron will publish on Nov. 1, by starkly chronicling his decades-long cage match with drinking and drug use. His addiction led to a medical odyssey in 2018 that included pneumonia, an exploded colon, a brief stint on life support, two weeks in a coma, nine months with a colostomy bag, more than a dozen stomach surgeries, and the realization that, by the time he was 49, he had spent more than half of his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities.Most of this is covered in the prologue. At one point, he writes in a parenthetical, “Please note: for the next few paragraphs, this book will be a biography rather than a memoir because I was no longer there.”The book is full of painful revelations, including one about short-lived, alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction, and another in which Perry describes carrying his top teeth to the dentist in a baggie in his jeans pocket. (He bit into a slice of peanut butter toast and they fell out, he writes: “Yes, all of them.”)Perry said he had a moment after he recorded his audiobook when he thought, “Oh my God, what a terrible life this person has had!” Then he realized, “Wait a minute, it’s me! I’m talking about me.”Quietly and then, as he relaxed, at a volume that allowed me to stop worrying about my recording device, Perry settled into the conversation about his substance abuse. It started with Budweiser and Andrès Baby Duck wine when he was 14, then ballooned to include vodka by the quart, Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin. He drew the line at heroin, a choice he credits with saving his life.“I would fake back injuries. I would fake migraine headaches. I had eight doctors going at the same time,” Perry said. “I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it. When you’re a drug addict, it’s all math. I go to this place, and I need to take three. And then I go to this place, and I’m going to take five because I’m going to be there longer. It’s exhausting but you have to do it or you get very, very sick. I wasn’t doing it to feel high or to feel good. I certainly wasn’t a partyer; I just wanted to sit on my couch, take five Vicodin and watch a movie. That was heaven for me. It no longer is.”Perry said he had been clean for 18 months, which means that he was newly drug- and alcohol-free when the “Friends” reunion aired in May 2021.“I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he estimated.Most addicts don’t have Perry’s resources. But they have what he called “the gift of anonymity,” while his bleakest moments have been photographed, chronicled and occasionally mocked. For the record, Perry isn’t a huge fan of secrecy as it pertains to Alcoholics Anonymous, where he sponsors three members. He explained: “It suggests that there’s a stigma and that we have to hide. This is not a popular opinion, by the way.”Perry’s demeanor brightened when we talked about pickleball, his latest obsession. He built a court at the house he’s moving into in the Palisades. He plays with friends and hired pros. He said, “I thought it would be a good idea, to pump myself up, to play pickleball before this interview, but basically I’m about to fall asleep in your lap.”So what inspired him to write a book?After his extended stay in a Los Angeles hospital, Perry started tapping out his life story on the Notes app on his phone. When he hit 110 pages, he showed them to his manager, who told him to keep going. He worked at his dining room table for about two hours a day, no more: “It was hard to face all this stuff.”Perry has written for television (“The Odd Couple,” “Mr. Sunshine”) before but, “writing a book I had not really thought of before,” he said. “Whenever I bumped into something that I didn’t really want to share, I would think of the people that I would be helping, and it would keep me going.”Over the course of the next hour, Perry returned to the idea of helping fellow addicts 15 times. The dedication at the front of the book reads: “For all of the sufferers out there. You know who you are.”He said: “It’s still a day-to-day process of getting better. Every day. It doesn’t end because I did this.”“I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center,” Perry writes.Danny Feld/Warner Bros.The memoir came together without a ghostwriter, which is rare for household-name authors. Megan Lynch, the senior vice president and publisher at Flatiron, said of the proposal she read last year: “There was a real voice to it. It was clear that he was going to share intimate details not just about his time on the show but about his entire life, and that felt revelatory. I’m not working on an assembly line of books by celebrities and it’s something as an editor I want to be very choosy about. For me, this really rose to a level that I do not ordinarily see.”Lynch, who watched “Friends” when she was 14 and credits it with providing a vision for a future life in New York City, added, “Unlike any celebrity that I think anyone has ever worked with, Matthew turned in his manuscript ahead of the deadline.”Although Perry hopes that “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing” will eventually be shelved in the self-help section of bookstores, “Friends” fans will find poignant nuggets in its pages. Perry writes gratefully and glowingly of the 10 seasons he and his co-stars worked together, earning $1 million per episode at their peak.He recalls the time Jennifer Aniston came to his trailer and said, “in a kind of weird but loving way,” that the group knew he was drinking again. “‘We can smell it,’” she said — and, he writes, “the plural ‘we’ hits me like a sledgehammer.” Another time, the cast confronted him in his dressing room.Perry also drops a sad bombshell about his onscreen wedding: “I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of my highest point in ‘Friends,’ the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”In a phone interview, Kudrow said: “It’s a hideous disease, and he has a tough version of it. What’s not changing is his will to keep going, keep fighting and keep living.”She added: “I love Matthew a lot. We’re part of a family. I’m basically ending this with ‘I’ll be there for you’ [the ‘Friends’ theme song], but it’s true. I’ll always be there for him.”Perry’s childhood friends Christopher and Brian Murray echoed this sentiment. “He’s gone through more than any human being I know and he’s come out on the good side of it,” said Brian, the older of the two brothers who have known Perry since first grade. Riding bikes around their rural corner of Ottawa, the trio would belt out the theme song from “The Rockford Files” and rib one another in the cadence that Perry later immortalized on “Friends.”“A lot of it was tough to understand,” Christopher said. “You wouldn’t wish that on anybody. Fundamentally, his personality and his heart are absolutely in the same place they were when he was a kid.”“Alcohol really did save me for a while,” Perry said. “Then it didn’t. It’s like your best friend turns to you and goes, Now I’m going to kill you. And then you raise your hand and say, I need help here.”Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesFailed relationships were among the hardest things to write about, Perry said (“I’m lonely, but there’s a couple of people on the payroll to keep me safe”), though he hopes to marry and have children in the future. “I think I’d be a great father,” he said.Eighteen years after “Friends” aired its last episode, Perry is tickled by its staying power, and its popularity among the children of its original viewers. “There are 15-year-old people wandering around, seeing me and wondering why I look so old,” he said.When I mentioned I’d seen a young woman in my hotel gym wearing a “Friends” sweatshirt — you rarely see merch from, say, “E.R.,” which capped off NBC’s Thursday night lineup in the ’90s — he laughed. “You should set me up with that girl,” he said. “Just say, I know this guy, he’s as single as they come.”Perry’s candid, darkly funny book now earns him an honorary folding chair — and shelf space — beside David Carr, Caroline Knapp, Leslie Jamison, Nic Sheff, Sarah Hepola and other authors who have explored the minute-to-minute, tooth-and-nail skirmish of recovery.“There is a hell,” Perry writes. “Don’t let anyone tell you different. I’ve been there; it exists; end of discussion.”He said, “Now I feel better because it’s out. It’s out on a piece of paper. The ‘why’ I’m still alive is definitely in the area of helping people.” More

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      ‘Our American Family’ Review: How Addiction Affects the Household

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      In this intimate documentary, a Philadelphia family of six reels from a daughter’s recent overdose.“Our American Family,” an intimate documentary, hopes to give a human face to the epidemic of addiction. The film opens and closes with footage of rainy city streets as maudlin music plays, but for the most part, the directors Hallee Adelman and Sean King O’Grady wisely home in on the story of a family of six in Philadelphia.The documentary pays special attention to the clan’s matrilineal bonds. When the film begins, the 29-year-old Nicole has recently survived an overdose, and must move into a nearby rehab clinic. She leaves her toddler in the care of her mother, Linda. Nicole is a veteran of recovery programs, and she approaches her crisis with a clear eye and jocular attitude.Also living under Linda’s roof are her husband (and Nicole’s stepfather), Bryan, and Nicole’s two brothers, Chris and Stephen. This is a stubborn group prone to squabbles, and the filmmakers assemble a nearly unremitting string of arguments, tense discussions and outbursts. Among an array of big personalities, Linda, a yoga instructor, is tasked with keeping the household peace.As the family members speak candidly both to one another and in voice-over testimonies, the film’s freshest insight lies in the comparison of addiction to cancer. Both are deadly diseases; only one is stigmatized. But for some in the family, the analogy only goes so far. People with cancer “don’t go through your wallet while you’re sleeping,” Bryan counters, adding, “They don’t get arrested because they’re trying to buy chemo.” That’s “part of the fallout from the disease,” Linda shoots back.The filmmakers let these tensions remain unsettled. Addiction is a complex, challenging topic, and “Our American Family,” in its sharp specificity, handles it with grace.Our American FamilyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Kodak Black Is Arrested on Drug Charges in Florida

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      The authorities said they found dozens of oxycodone tablets and $75,000 in cash while searching the rapper’s car after he was pulled over in Fort Lauderdale on Friday.The rapper Kodak Black was arrested on Friday in South Florida on felony drug charges, the authorities said. It was the latest in a long string of legal woes for Black, 25, who was serving prison time on weapons charges when President Donald J. Trump commuted his sentence on his last day in office last year.At about 4:30 p.m., Florida Highway Patrol troopers saw Black driving a purple Dodge Durango in Fort Lauderdale with tinted windows that appeared darker than allowed under state law.The troopers confirmed that the car’s registration was expired. After pulling Black over, they observed “a strong odor of marijuana” coming from inside the car, the Highway Patrol said in a statement. The troopers searched the car and found a clear bag containing 31 oxycodone tablets and nearly $75,000 in cash, the Highway Patrol said.Black, whose legal name is Bill Kapri, was arrested and taken to the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale. He was released on Saturday on a $75,000 bond, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said.Black was charged with one count of trafficking oxycodone and one count of possession of a controlled substance, according to the Broward County Clerk’s Office. He pleaded not guilty and requested a jury trial, court documents show.Bradford Cohen, Black’s lawyer, said on Twitter that there were “always additional facts and circumstances that give rise to a defense, especially in this case.” Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Black’s lawyers filed a motion on Sunday to “inspect, weigh and independently test” the tablets that the authorities have identified as oxycodone pills.Black, who is from Pompano Beach, Fla., topped the Billboard album charts in December 2018 with his album “Dying to Live.” But his career suffered as he has faced various drug, weapons, sexual assault and robbery charges over the years. Early Monday morning, he posted his mug shot on Instagram with the caption, “Not Again.”In 2019, Black pleaded guilty to federal weapons charges, admitting that he lied on background check forms while buying firearms earlier that year. Prosecutors said two of the guns were later found at crime scenes.Black had served about half of a 46-month prison term when Trump commuted his sentence in the final hours of his presidency.Shortly after his release, Black put out a song called “Last Day In,” expressing his hopes for the future: “This my first day out the joint, so that’s my last day in.” More

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      ‘Women of the White Buffalo’ Review: Speaking Out on the Reservation

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      This documentary sheds light on the destitute conditions in two South Dakota reservations through the stories of the communities’ women.The documentary “Women of the White Buffalo” explores the myriad challenges experienced by Indigenous people on reservations, as well as the historical roots of these social maladies. The story is told through Lakota women living on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations in South Dakota, where rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty and violence threaten the Lakotas’ way of life and future generations.The director Deborah Anderson features first-person interviews with nine women (and one man), ranging in age from 10 to 98, who are trying to heal generations of trauma in their communities. And though the film lacks a clear narrative arc, put together, these stories draw a line between the historical genocide and displacement suffered by Indigenous people and the present destitution on reservations.Vandee Khalsa-Swiftbird is a survivor of sex trafficking who now works on behalf of other victims and fosters a young girl whose troubled mother could no longer care for her. Julie Richards founded the nonprofit Mothers Against Meth Alliance after her own daughter became addicted to methamphetamine. And SunRose IronShell is a high school teacher who helps her students process their traumas through art.Children are featured prominently throughout the film, whether riding horses or dancing in traditional garb. This choice helps plant the documentary firmly in the present, illuminating the past but not dwelling on it. Indeed, the Lakota women appear more interested in solutions and in instilling in Native children a sense of self-worth and self-determination. The way forward, they seem to agree, is to return to their spiritual roots. Delacina Chief Eagle, a young woman who became addicted to meth after her brother died, said of her recovery: “I found myself, through my culture, through my family, through the children.”Women of the White BuffaloNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Amanda Bynes, Former Child Star, Is Released From Conservatorship

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      A judge in California freed the former Nickelodeon star from the arrangement that had governed her life after highly publicized struggles with substance abuse.A judge ruled on Tuesday to end the conservatorship that for the better part of a decade has governed the life of Amanda Bynes, who shot to fame as a child star on Nickelodeon and went on to have highly publicized struggles with substance abuse.A court in California first ordered that Ms. Bynes be put in a conservatorship — a legal arrangement typically reserved for people who are older, ailing or have disabilities — in 2013, after erratic public behavior and a series of arrests. Over the years, Ms. Bynes’s parents have overseen her life, taking control of medical and mental health decisions and, for a time, her finances.The conservatorship system has come under intense scrutiny in the last year, after Britney Spears condemned her own as abusive and accused her father and others of exploiting her and seeking to capitalize off her wealth and stardom. A judge agreed to terminate Spears’s conservatorship in November.But Ms. Bynes’s conservatorship appeared to reach a smoother ending. Her mother, Lynn Bynes, who had acted as her conservator, told the court that she agreed that her daughter was now ready to live without that level of oversight, and a psychiatrist signed off, writing that Ms. Bynes had “no apparent impairment in alertness and attention, information and processing, or ability to modulate mood and affect.” Ms. Bynes’s lawyer, David A. Esquibias, held her case up as an example of how a conservatorship could be effective in rehabilitating a person while allowing them a degree of autonomy.“For the most part, mom has allowed Amanda to live freely,” Mr. Esquibias said. “She never wanted to be conserved, but she understood why.”At Ventura County Superior Court on Tuesday, Judge Roger L. Lund granted Ms. Bynes’s request to terminate the conservatorship. “She’s done everything the court has asked over a long period of time,” Judge Lund said.Ms. Bynes, 35, gained prominence as a young cast member of “All That,” Nickelodeon’s “Saturday Night Live”-style show, before headlining her own sketch comedy program, “The Amanda Show,” which helped define the network’s goofy brand of non sequitur humor. Ms. Bynes then graduated to roles in mainstream romantic comedies including “She’s the Man” and “Easy A.”A series of run-ins with the law in 2012 and 2013 drew intense media coverage, as she was arrested and accused of driving under the influence, hit and run and possession of marijuana. Ms. Bynes was held involuntarily in a psychiatric hospital in 2013 after setting a small fire in a driveway, and was later ordered into a temporary conservatorship.In an interview with Paper Magazine in 2018, Ms. Bynes said, “I got really into my drug usage and it became a really dark, sad world for me.” She told the magazine that she had been sober for nearly four years.At a time of reassessment of how the media, the entertainment industry and the public have treated female celebrities going through mental health or substance abuse struggles — spurred in part by Ms. Spears’s case — Ms. Bynes offers another example of a young woman raised in the spotlight whose subsequent breakdown was breathlessly covered by tabloids.In recent years, Ms. Bynes’s life has stabilized, her lawyer said. She is now studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and lives in an apartment community for women “poised to transition into an autonomous lifestyle,” according to papers filed with the court last month that requested Ms. Bynes’s conservatorship be terminated.“Ms. Bynes desires to live free of any constraint,” the filing said.The former actress has said little publicly about the conservatorship, aside from a video posted to social media in which she took issue with the cost of her mental health treatment.Conservatorships, often called guardianships, have received a great deal of public interest as a result of Ms. Spears’s case, disability rights advocates say, and a bill in California making its way through the state legislature would make it easier for conservatorships to be terminated and would require courts and potential conservators to consider alternative options first.Judy Mark, the president of Disability Voices United, a nonprofit organization that is working to get the legislation passed, said that while she supports the termination of Ms. Spears’s and Ms. Bynes’s conservatorships, she is not seeing it getting easier for a more typical conservatee to assert their freedoms.“Not everyone has Instagram accounts with millions of followers and a fan base that cares about them,” Ms. Mark said. “Most people conserved are normal people with disabilities, and most courts are very paternalistic.”Ms. Bynes and her parents have long been preparing for the termination of the conservatorship to ensure a smooth transition, said Tamar Arminak, a lawyer for Ms. Bynes’s parents. (The conservatorship of Ms. Bynes’s estate was ended several years ago, leaving the conservatorship in charge of her person, which involved medical and basic life decisions.) The court’s ruling allows Ms. Bynes to make personal choices that she did not have before, such as getting married to her fiancé, Ms. Arminak said.“The moment that it was clear and apparent that Amanda would do well off this conservatorship we agreed to terminate this conservatorship,” she said. More

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      'Euphoria' Is Hard to Watch. Why Can't Viewers Look Away?

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      It’s one of the most popular shows on television right now. But sometimes even the fans need to calm down after an episode.Every Sunday around 9 p.m., Maddie Bone and her five roommates, all in their 20s and 30s, dim the lights in their Brooklyn apartment, fire up the projector and turn on HBO Max — with subtitles, just in case the J train rattles by. They also brew a pot of Sleepytime tea, not to help them drift off but to keep their nerves at bay while they watch the heart-racing fever dream that is “Euphoria.”“We choose not to drink during it,” Ms. Bone, 26, said. “You need something that deeply relaxes you.”After all, rare are the moments of peace in the show, a daring ensemble drama about teenagers pushing the limits in a Southern California suburb. Most episodes include some mix of bad sex, graphic violence, gratuitous nudity, copious consumption of drugs and alcohol and unsparing depictions of addiction. For the viewer, feeling stressed, anxious or restless while watching comes with the territory.had me STRESSED #EuphoriaHBO #euphoria pic.twitter.com/fBP3uRw6ZQ— ☂️☂️ (@wetsockera) February 7, 2022
      “I think there is a lot of stress/anxiety that goes hand in hand with watching ‘Euphoria,’” Adhya Hoskote, a 20-year-old from San Jose, Calif., wrote in a direct message on Instagram. “Personally I know my anxiety is not the same as those who have had firsthand experience with addiction or friends or family struggling with addiction, but it can be hard to watch at times.”Ms. Hoskote said she has to take breaks while watching. But like the millions of other people who keep up with the show, she always comes back.The show, written and produced by Sam Levinson, presents a stylized portrayal of young people in the throes of addiction, grief and betrayal. Every story line is its own miniature trauma plot.Zendaya, the show’s star and one of its executive producers, issued a content warning ahead of the Season 2 premiere: “This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Please only watch if you feel comfortable.”Viewers have also noted the intensity of this season. “You’re just anxious for an hour straight,” said Merna Ahmed, 21. “When you’re watching a horror movie or listening to something that’s super high adrenaline, you keep listening because you want to know what’s going to happen. You just can’t look away.”This season’s sixth episode, which aired on Feb. 13, drew in 5.1 million viewers, according to HBO, despite premiering during the Super Bowl (which had an audience of 112.3 million).“Euphoria” follows in the footsteps of teen dramas such as “The O.C.,” “Skins” and “Degrassi” (the cast of which included a young Drake, who is now an executive producer on “Euphoria”) in its approach to coming of age. But “Euphoria” has stood out for its willingness to push to extremes alongside its aesthetically pleasing imagery.We look on as Zendaya’s character, Rue, relapses and collapses into her addiction to opiates, torching bridges with people she claims to love and physically destroying her home. We watch as robberies take place, guns are cocked and drivers speed haphazardly while taking swigs from beer bottles.Zendaya as Rue in “Euphoria.”HBOIf that sounds unpleasant — agonizing even — it hasn’t stopped people from tuning in.Ms. Ahmed, who lives in New Brunswick, N.J., keeps up with “Euphoria” for social reasons; she loves discussing the drama with her friends and seeing memes about the show on Twitter. But she is also holding out hope that the characters, even those in the deepest trenches, will eventually be redeemed.“I was thinking about why we keep watching when it’s so agonizing. For me, at least, I think it’s because you want to see these characters reach redemption,” she said. “You want to see where it ends up for them and root for them.”Philip Cadoux, 23, who watches with friends every week, loves the show’s colors, costumes and acting. He is also pulled in by empathy, as he knows people who have struggled with addiction.“It’s like an intense dramatization of things we all experience. They’re very relatable characters, but the things that they go through are just amped up to an 11,” said Mr. Cadoux, who lives in Brooklyn. “I don’t relate to Rue, but I relate to her sister or mother.”Apart from the aesthetics and award-winning acting, mental health professionals agree that the show can be relatable.“There is a parallel process between the characters they’re watching onscreen and viewers’ own willingness and ability to adapt to the pandemic,” Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist in New York, wrote in an email. “Viewers are watching various stories unfold that center on the question: Would you do whatever is necessary to get what you want?”She also attributes the show’s success to a phenomenon she calls “doom watching,” a cousin of doomscrolling, consuming bad news ever-present via our phones. While “doom watching,” people watch intense shows that feed off their own anxieties, especially at night when other distractions might not be as readily available. She sees it as a method of projection, specifically “projecting the personal fears and stressors of oneself to the collective group or external and fictionalized television characters.”But it’s not all doom and gloom. Dr. Romanoff also believes the show can serve as a vehicle for education and understanding.“The show does a good job at showcasing mental health, addiction struggles and how people address this through self-medication,” she wrote. “The show has important implications when it comes to increasing awareness and empathy for addiction, mental health, sexuality and relationships. It encourages important conversations and self-reflection.”Mary Kay Holmes, a 46-year-old writer and parent of two teenagers, taps into that school of thought. Every week, she watches the show alongside her 17-year-old daughter (her 15-year-old opts to watch it alone, finding it “cringe” to watch with parents).Ms. Holmes and her daughter both enjoy the show as a source of entertainment first and foremost (she’d be watching it even if she didn’t have kids), but as a mother, she often utilizes “Euphoria” as a mechanism to have informal conversations with her children about drug use, relationships, toxic masculinity, gender and sexuality.“It’s a hard show to watch, but there’s a lot of good stuff that comes up,” Ms. Holmes said. “I think in my house, we’ve used television a lot to bring up conversations and talk about things, and I know that’s probably not the norm for a lot of families, but I try to keep up with what my kids are consuming, as opposed to restricting it.”But the main reason most viewers seem to return is that the show holds their attention: with its eye-catching fashion and makeup, its stunning visuals and the twists and turns that keep people talking.“I definitely watch it for the drama. I don’t have a lot of drama in my life right now because I work from home, and I’m pretty emotionally solid right now,” Ms. Bone said. “However, I love to be able to hash out some of the plotlines with co-workers, friends, passers-by, someone I meet at the bodega. It’s these things that we can really latch on to.” More

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      Fetty Wap Is Arrested on Federal Drug Charges at Citi Field

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      The rapper, who had been set to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival, was arraigned Friday on Long Island.The rapper Fetty Wap pleaded not guilty to federal drug charges on Friday, a day after he was arrested by F.B.I. agents at Citi Field, where he was scheduled to perform at the Rolling Loud music festival.The artist, whose legal name is Willie Junior Maxwell II, was arraigned at a federal court in Central Islip, N.Y. He and five co-defendants, including a former New Jersey corrections officer, were charged with one count of conspiring to distribute and possess controlled substances.Officials said the defendants distributed more than 100 kilograms of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and crack across Long Island and New Jersey over a yearlong period beginning in June 2019. The other five defendants, who were arraigned on various dates within the past month, were also charged with using firearms in connection with drug trafficking.“The pipeline of drugs in this investigation ran thousands of miles from the West Coast to the communities here in our area, contributing to the addiction and overdose epidemic we have seen time and time again tear people’s lives apart,” Michael J. Driscoll, an assistant director-in-charge in the F.B.I., said in a statement.Mr. Maxwell, 30, who is from Paterson, N.J., rose to fame in 2015 with his hit single “Trap Queen,” in which he sings and raps about cooking drugs with a partner. The New York Times once described it as “shimmering and yelping and borderline whimsical,” and the song was nominated for a Grammy in 2016. Mr. Maxwell released a new mixtape called “The Butterfly Effect” last week.Mr. Maxwell was scheduled to perform on the first day of Rolling Loud, a traveling hip-hop festival, at Citi Field. Bobby Shmurda, Jack Harlow and 50 Cent were among the artists on the bill. A law enforcement official with knowledge of the case, but who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Mr. Maxwell was taken into custody shortly after he arrived at Citi Field. He had been slotted to perform at 4:45 p.m., according to the festival’s website.Mr. Maxwell’s lawyer, Navarro W. Gray of Hackensack, N.J., said in a statement, “We pray that this is all a big misunderstanding.” Mr. Gray said he hoped that Mr. Maxwell would be released “so we can clear things up as soon as possible.”The rapper was represented by another lawyer, Elizabeth Macedonio, for his court appearance, which was conducted by video conference. He did not seek bail and was held in detention. The charge carries a minimum sentence of 10 years, and a maximum of life in prison.Ms. Macedonio did not immediately respond to a request for further comment; nor did Mr. Maxwell’s label, 300 Entertainment.Timothy D. Sini, the district attorney for Suffolk County, said the defendants had used eastern Long Island as the base for a multimillion-dollar drug ring.“They were wholesale drug dealers who pumped massive quantities of narcotics into our communities,” Mr. Sini said in a statement, adding, “The magnitude of this operation was enormous.”Three of the defendants had already been charged in connection with the case. In June 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Mr. Sini’s office and other agencies announced charges against the former New Jersey corrections officer, Anthony Cyntje, now 23, of Passaic; Brian Sullivan, now 26, of Lake Grove, N.Y.; and Anthony Leonardi, now 47, of Coram, N.Y.The indictment unsealed Friday also included charges against Mr. Leonardi’s brother, Robert Leonardi, 26, of Levittown, Pa., as well as Kavaughn Wiggins, also 26, of Coram, N.Y.Prosecutors said the Leonardi brothers, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Wiggins participated in the purchase and transport of drugs from the West Coast, while Mr. Maxwell was a “kilogram-level redistributor” and Mr. Cyntje transported cocaine to New Jersey.Patrick J. Brackley, a lawyer representing Mr. Cyntje, said that he was “alleged to have participated in only one day of the entire conspiracy” and that he had pleaded not guilty to the charges. Since his arrest on Oct. 13, Mr. Cyntje has been held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Mr. Brackley said. He was being held in quarantine because of Covid-19 protocols.When the authorities announced the charges last year, they identified Mr. Sullivan and Anthony Leonardi’s son James Sosa, then 25, as ringleaders of the operation, charging both with working as major drug traffickers, among other counts.A lawyer for Mr. Sullivan, David H. Besso, said he was “a regular kid from Long Island” and had pleaded not guilty to the charges. He has been in custody at Yaphank Correctional Facility since his arrest last year, Mr. Besso said.The authorities said Friday that they recovered $1.5 million in cash, numerous fentanyl pills, 16 kilograms of cocaine, two kilograms of heroin, two 9-millimeter handguns, two other pistols, a rifle and ammunition in the course of the yearlong investigation. More

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      How Billy Strings Picked His Way to the Other Side

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      At 28, the singer and guitarist is bluegrass’s new transgressive star. A decade ago, he didn’t expect to live this long.Billy Strings did not know what exactly had given him the hangover from hell. Was it the previous evening’s onstage bottles of beer or post-show cans of wine? The late-night tumblers of whiskey that Strings — then an unsigned 23-year-old bluegrass hot shot — bought to celebrate that profitable night in the summer of 2016? The endless bumps of cocaine?Barreling down Interstate 85 the next afternoon through suffocating Southern heat, Strings just knew he’d made a mistake. Every 15 minutes, he shuffled outside to vomit until the rest of his band agreed that, if they were going to reach their South Carolina show, they couldn’t stop again. Strings hung his head from a window, streaking the van’s sides with last night’s regret. He swore he’d never again let the partying interfere with the playing. He has yet to take another drink.“I had decided this music stuff could save my life,” Strings said by phone from a parking lot in Spokane, Wash., lounging in one of his twin buses. “Music was my one opportunity — otherwise, I was going back to being a meth head, overdosing, prison. I was not going to mess this up with booze.”The guitar, after all, had given Strings purpose since he was a toddler, vying for validation in a home struck by drugs and tragedy. The instrument never betrayed him. In the five years since he vowed never to betray it, Strings has emerged as a premier bluegrass mind for this post-everything era.On three albums, including the new “Renewal,” which came out last week, he has zigged and zagged between the form’s antediluvian traditions and rapid-fire improvisations that hit like hard bop, all within songs with hooks so sharp that he seems poised for crossover stardom. He may be the only contemporary musician capable of releasing singles with the bluegrass avatar Del McCoury, the country star Luke Combs and the R&B enigma RMR within a six-month span, as he did this year. He remains grateful for the hangover.“I was raised on raging, partying, playing bluegrass until 3 a.m., but I am trying to create structure. That is hard because of what’s in my blood,” said Strings, 28. “I hate to even call this a career. It’s my life.”Born William Lee Apostol, Strings grew up in the tiny lake-bound Central Michigan town of Muir, where his childhood seemed an insurmountable obstacle course. His father, Billy, died from a heroin overdose when Strings, his youngest son, was 2. His mother, Debra Apostol, married her first love, Terry Barber, who reared Strings as his own.As Debra battled depression prompted by her sister’s murder, the couple slid into penury. Their home became an all-hours drug den — “a meth house,” Strings said with a sigh, “with tweakers in my living room smoking meth one day, getting hauled off to prison for 20 years the next.” They were stuck in a small town, Debra said in an interview, and simply bored. Strings smoked his first joint, stolen from his grandfather, when he was 8, and first got drunk at 10.The setting, at least, inspired a child so obsessed with music, he slept with his guitar and read rock biographies during class. His stepfather, a crackerjack guitarist, taught him the bluegrass songbook and Black Sabbath anthems. His mother paraded around their trailer hoisting joints, blasting Santana or Soundgarden. Strings toiled away, matching everything he heard.“I was this 5-year-old learning to play guitar so my parents would pay attention,” Strings said, recounting a recent therapy session’s epiphany. “Music is the only thing that’s been good to me my entire life.”“I hate to even call this a career,” Strings said. “It’s my life.”Will Matsuda for The New York TimesBefore Strings was a teenager, he began walking alone to school in the snow and ferreting whatever food he found, feeling like some S.E. Hinton pariah who loved skateboarding and flatpicking. At 14, he left home to couch-surf with friends, falling in and out of legal trouble while failing in and out of school.“I said, ‘I want to see what my parents are so into that they’re lost to me,’ so I tried meth,” he said — “with my mom,” adding a customary barrage of profanity. “Heroin, crack, pills: I stopped caring. I thought I would end up going down their bad road, anyway.”One friend’s mother intervened, convincing Strings he could eclipse his upbringing. He eventually fled his hometown, heading three hours north to Traverse City and a new reality. “I moved out from under a cloud,” he said.In Traverse City, Strings met Don Julin, an area mandolin aficionado three decades his senior. Their duo specialized in hard, fast and loud renditions of the staples that Strings’s stepfather taught him. But Strings discovered the fertile intersection of bluegrass and jam-band culture, popularized by Yonder Mountain String Band and Greensky Bluegrass. He played 20-second solos for 20 people; they jammed for 15 minutes for bobbing throngs.“Those guys,” Strings said, smiling, “painted my pure bluegrass heart.”Strings discarded the tie-and-sports-coat uniform he donned with Julin and decamped to Nashville. He built an acoustic quartet willing to race beyond bluegrass’s bounds and returned to the road, where he practically lived until the Covid-19 pandemic.Routing his guitar through 27 effects pedals to summon Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour or Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman, Strings emerged as a sudden live sensation. In 2021, his second solo record, “Home,” won the Grammy for best bluegrass album.“Billy knows stuff I don’t know, and I play with people with new information,” said Béla Fleck, the banjoist who has goaded his instrument into novel terrain for a quarter-century. Fleck invited Strings to play on his album “My Bluegrass Heart,” an honor Strings gushes about more than any award.“This music needs a fresh jolt once in a while from someone who comes in from a different angle,” Fleck continued. “Billy is the lightning rod.”“Renewal,” Strings’s third solo album, largely delights in matters of the heart.Will Matsuda for The New York TimesIt’s not only the sound of bluegrass that Strings is reimagining but also the image. Sitting in his bus as 6,000 fans drifted into a sold-out amphitheater near Portland, Ore., this month, Strings held a svelte black vaporizer in one hand while gripping a $300 electronic bong with the other. Giggling beneath a hat that read “Sex & Drugs & Flatt & Scruggs,” he looked more like the thoroughly tattooed brother of Shaggy from “Scooby-Doo” than those bluegrass patriarchs.He joked about covering “Dueling Banjos,” made famous in the film “Deliverance,” in full B.D.S.M. regalia and lampooned bluegrass posters for looking like antique-auction handbills. He extolled the hallucinogen DMT for making him a kinder person. Scrolling through his recent Spotify favorites, where Juice WRLD rubbed shoulders with Marty Stuart, Strings admitted that he was proud his friendship with Post Malone and his work with the masked Black singer RMR irked traditionalists. “I see racist crap all the time in bluegrass,” he said, with an uncharacteristic flash of anger.RMR was floored by Strings’s rebellious streak, and happily agreed to sing on “Wargasm,” a plea for peace that suggests Alice in Chains going country. “This is music for old guys with a beard, but he didn’t fit that mold,” said RMR, who went viral in 2020 by covering Rascal Flatts amid a crew brandishing an armory. “He was dope, because he was different.”As much as Strings revels in pushing boundaries, his songwriting taps the same heartland sincerity that Bill Monroe embraced nearly a century ago. Strings sings of modern American woes with disarming simplicity, even as he warps the sound. His first hit, “Dust in a Baggie,” sprints through the parable of a meth addict who heeds warnings too late. “Turmoil & Tinfoil,” his debut’s title track, mourns the way meth burned his own mother, her face ashen from exhaustion.“Renewal,” Strings’s third album, largely delights in matters of the heart. In May, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend and tour manager, Ally Dale, so he celebrates finding love during the tender aubade “In the Morning Light.” But there’s also climate-change anxiety, small-town ennui and a nine-minute fight song for battling depression, “Hide and Seek.” Despite the song’s instrumental mirth, the chorus comes from the final text messages a friend sent before committing suicide.Strings called this “sublimation,” or turning life’s darkest matter into positivity. It’s more powerful, he suggested, than any guitar trick. Through hours of therapy and nights of singing to strangers, he did that with his parents, too. These days, they are largely sober, though many of their old friends continue to party or remain in jail; his mother has developed what she called an addiction to coconut water. Strings once winced when they arrived at shows, but last year, he took his stepfather on tour. Their turmoil gave him a reason to succeed.“They did pretty good, because look at me now,” he said, chuckling as he exhaled another tuft of weed smoke. “They couldn’t take care of me, but they taught me the thing that helped me take care of myself. As a parent, isn’t that your job?” More