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This 'Friends' Fan Theory About Monica And Joey Has Me Shooketh

When it comes to Friends, I was definitely a late bloomer. I only just watched the entire series this past year on Netflix. IDK, my parents repressed me as a kid, what can I say? So I’m not going to be one of those people who pretends to know everything there is to know about Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler, Ross, and Rachel. But like, I know things. Or at least, I thought I did until I read about this Friends fan theory about Monica and Joey. This fan theory comes from us courtesy of, where else, Reddit. It was posted like, a year ago to the r/fantheories subreddit (of course there is a fan theories subreddit), but in my defense I only saw Brobible post about it yesterday. No, I cannot in good conscience answer what I was doing on Brobible, but I can tell you I immediately took 12 consecutive showers afterwards.

If you’ve ever wondered WTF Joey does all day and how he manages to be an adult who doesn’t live under the care of his parents or a legally appointed guardian when he acts borderline mentally handicapped, or why Monica acts so crazy all the time and why she doesn’t let Chandler into the closet by the big windows, buckle the fuck up because this theory might explain everything. Straight from Reddit user lolalodge, here we go.

“Alright, so Monica is a restaurant chef, usually a Sous Chef or even head chef most of the time in some rather high end restaurants in NYC. First, most people that work in the restaurant industry tend to gravitate towards some sort of substance since the job is very high stress. But that’s not even my reasoning. See, head chefs and sous chefs in high end restaurants in NYC tend to get paid a lot, like $50-$100 dollars an hour a lot. Monica also lives in a rent controlled apartment that she illegally sublets from her dead grandmother, she even has a roommate to share the bills with. She doesn’t own an obscene amount of clothes or anything, doesn’t go out to bars regularly, so where exactly does her money go?”

Well, first of all, if restaurants and sous chefs today make $50-100 an hour, you’d have to adjust for what they would have been making back in the 90s. But that’s a good point; I never thought about it. On the one hand, Monica seems like the kind of obsessive saver who could retire by age 30 because she’s been putting money into her 401k since she was 11. On the other hand, she probably also spends a lot of cleaning products. But those explanations don’t come close to the theory, which is, wait for it:

“Cocaine, which she stashes in the closet by the big windows, which is why when Chandler opens it in the last season, she flips out because she doesn’t want him to find her cocaine stash. It also explains why Monica is so high energy and high strung. Monica doing cocaine also explains her rapid weight loss back when she was a teenager.”

Joey Tribbiani

Wow. Game, set, and that’s match. I can definitely see this. This explains so much. Maybe that’s why Monica likes everything so clean—she doesn’t want anyone to know about her habit. And it’s why she’s always yelling. Wow, everything makes sense. I am shooketh.

But that’s not all. The theory continues, “As for Joey, Joey pretty much smokes weed all day. That’s why he’s always hungry, can eat a ton of food and is constantly napping and is kind of spaced out and a lot of what other people say goes ‘whoosh’ right over his head.” 

Okay, I mean, this is less shocking because this is obvious and I feel like Joey was purposefully written this way to kind of allude to this possibility. But also, to quote the Queen Mona Lisa Vito, this theory does not hold water. Number one, eating a ton of food, constantly napping, and being kind of spaced out are literally my M.O. and I don’t even like weed. Show me someone who fits those criteria and I’ll show you your average millennial. Also, and more importantly, Joey like, doesn’t work. Sure, he had that Dr. Drake Ramoray money, but is he really living off that money if he can’t even afford to pay for half of a new fridge? Or like, his share of rent for a significant portion of the show? If there’s a weed man in NYC who’s handing out free weed to the poor, even if he’s fictional, kindly let me know his name and contact information. I know I said I don’t like weed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have friends.

In conclusion, Monica was definitely a coke fiend, and Joey is just the OG millennial. Honestly, Rachel probably did coke too, working in fashion. And Ross too, now that I think about it—it would explain why he became so erratic towards the end and always blew up other nothing. Fuck it, they were all probably on coke; this show was set in Manhattan in the 90s. Except Phoebe—she was definitely on some harder shit.