Peter Hitchens' TV clash with Matthew Perry: Why I was right to challenge this cosseted Hollywood star's demands (and why his 'drug addiction' is no more real than Chandler from Friends) Hollywood royalty is much more regal than the real thing. Iâ€™ve met prime ministers with smaller retinues than the one that trails after Matthew Perry, who used to be Chandler in the TV series Friends. He and his entourage were given a hospitality room all to themselves at the BBC on Monday while I and all the other Newsnight guests were tactfully steered elsewhere. I have seen the arrogance of power in many forms and in many places. But Iâ€™ve seldom seen anything to beat the sense of pure entitlement that radiated from Mr Perry. Debate: American actor Matthew Perry, left, and Mail columnist Peter Hitchens, right, traded blows on BBC Newsnight on Monday evening, with the latter questioning the reality of drug addiction How he has suffered, we are supposed to think. How good it is of him to now embrace a supposedly noble cause, that of special courts for people who buy and use illegal drugs. Who is Mr Perry speaking for in this campaign? Why is he involved in it? As far as I know he has never been prosecuted for any offence. He is described in newspaper reports as having been â€˜battling addictionâ€™, a prejudiced phrase which assumes that â€˜addictionâ€™ exists, and that he has no free will, and so must wrestle for the rest of his days with some mighty overpowering force. But what does it actually mean? It means that, lapped in money and fame, and greatly loved for speaking lines written for him by others, he took prescription opioid pills and swallowed vodka by the bottle until he became so ill he had to stop. Thereâ€™s a lot of this sort of thing in showbusiness, and my own view is that itâ€™s a very bad example to all those poor people who confuse actors with the parts they play, and are influenced by them, as millions were by Friends. It is not especially deserving of sympathy, let alone admiration. Weâ€™re invited to walk a mile in the shoes of those whose lives are difficult, but most of us probably couldnâ€™t afford the shoes these people wear. I was ready to talk to Mr Perry about drugs courts, but when I said that â€˜addictionâ€™ was a fantasy, Mr Perry decided heâ€™d rather have a fight. He said: â€˜You are making a point that is as ludicrous as saying Peter Pan is real.â€™ Later, in the same vein, he called me â€˜Santaâ€™, suggesting that I believe in Father Christmas. Sense of entitlement: Perry, who believes that special courts should be set up to deal with drug users Yet it is he, not I, who insists in believing in a comforting fantasy. â€˜Addictionâ€™ is no more real than Tinkerbell, and, like her, would fade and die if people stopped believing in it. We live in a world where millions have been taught what to think, and very few taught how to think. And the word â€˜addictionâ€™ has slipped into common speech so that we hardly ever consider it. People are said to be â€˜addicted toâ€™ anything from sex to chocolate cake. What does the tricky word mean? If it means that they have no power to stop themselves, then how is it that so many â€˜addictsâ€™ manage to give up the thing theyâ€™re supposedly enslaved to? And if it doesnâ€™t mean that they have no power to stop themselves, then it looks remarkably like an excuse. Many people are unconsciously influenced in their views by films such as French Connection II, in which a narcotics detective is forcibly turned into an â€˜addictâ€™ by crooks and then has to undergo a terrifying withdrawal. But this portrayal isnâ€™t accurate. I was alerted to this long ago by Theodore Dalrymple, for many years a prison doctor, who wrote in his book Junk Medicine that most â€˜addictedâ€™ prisoners stopped taking heroin, without great difficulty, soon after they arrived in jail. Itâ€™s also well known that US soldiers in Vietnam used heroin in huge numbers, yet most gave up, again without difficulty, when they returned home. Dalrymple observed often that the feared â€˜cold turkeyâ€™ was nothing like as bad as claimed, and he concluded: â€˜To conceive of heroin addiction as such seems to me to miss the fundamental point: it is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment.â€™ Actually, the moment you think about it, the idea that it is a physical illness begins to fall apart in your hands. How could you identify the symptoms? But huge industries of â€˜treatmentâ€™ and â€˜rehabilitationâ€™, not to mention the makers of substitutes such as methadone, and the regiments of social workers whose employment depends on these (largely futile) programmes, lobby constantly against the truth. More from Peter Hitchens... And once an idea becomes conventional wisdom, it is quite risky to challenge it. My view that addiction is fiction is actually shocking to many who have never heard this possibility discussed. Rather than examine my case, they react like so many startled squirrels, screeching and running about in circles. Plenty of people who like to think they believe in free speech strongly dislike it when they meet it. So the electronic Left-wing mob that is Twitter is full of personal insults, rage, and threats of violence aimed at me, and at least one shamelessly totalitarian suggestion that I should be put in a â€˜re-education clinicâ€™. As to the argument, two quite prominent campaigners for relaxing the drug laws, with whom I have clashed in the past, contacted me on Wednesday to say they were embarrassed by Mr Perryâ€™s performance, especially his weird claim that â€˜addictionâ€™ is â€˜an obsession of the mind and an allergy of the bodyâ€™. Also Mr Perry contradicted himself about his drinking. He said he was â€˜in control of the first drinkâ€™. Well, how was he â€˜in controlâ€™ except by the use of his will? The point never seemed to have occurred to Mr Perry, who simply repeated that the American Medical Association said that addiction was a disease. Well, doctors are often horribly wrong and are very vulnerable to fashion. Think of lobotomies and Thalidomide. For years they thought stomach ulcers were caused by stress when in fact they are caused by bacteria. The American Psychiatric Association used to say homosexuality was a disease. Doctors also donâ€™t want to miss a chance to keep a patient by prescribing a pill or a spell in a costly clinic. Their opinion is no substitute for thought. And if these people really believed that â€˜addictionâ€™ was a disease you could catch, and which then sat on your back till you died, then surely theyâ€™d agree with me that the best protection against it would be a severe deterrent law, so that nobody ever started doing the things that are â€˜addictiveâ€™. But funnily enough, they never do agree with me about that.