Matthew Perry’s memoir is filled with raw details about his raging addiction.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing goes on sale Nov. 1, but a newinterview and book excerpts reveal in shocking detail the depth of the53-year-old actor’s struggles with alcohol and opioids. Among the disclosuresis that Perry estimates he has spent $9 million to get frugal. He currentlyhas 18 months of sobriety, meaning he got sober again just prior to the 2021_friends_ reunion, after nearly dying when his colon burst from opioid misusein 2018. More details of that dramatic near-death experience, including thathe had to learn to walk again, have also come to light.
Perry was just 14 when he started drinking. At 24, he had joined the cast of_friends_ and his alcohol addiction was starting. It morphed into drinkingvodka by the quart and taking 55 Vicodin a day.
“I would fake back injuries. I would fake migraine headaches. I had eightdoctors going at the same time,” Perry told the New York Times of his doctorshopping at the height of his struggles. Perry, who also abused OxyContin andXanax, said, “I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figureout 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 takefive because I’m going to be there longer. I wasn’t doing it to feel high orto feel good. I certainly wasn’t a partier; I just wanted to sit on my couch,take five Vicodin and watch a movie. That was heaven for me. “
Today, Perry estimates, “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying toget sober.”
Matthew Perry, left with Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow during Season 3 of_friends_. By the end of that season, he was “spending most of my timefiguring out how to get 55 Vicodin a day … otherwise I’d get so sick.” (Photo:J. Delvalle/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
That’s a staggering amount even for someone with his wealth, famously pullingin $1 million an episode the last two seasons of friends. His effortsincluded 15 stints in rehab, more than 25 drug detoxes, long-term stays insober homes and employing a sober companion to be with him at all times tokeep him from using. He said he’s spent more than half of his life intreatment centers or sober living facilities.
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While starring on friends , which ran from 1994 to 2004, he struggled, butwas supported by his castmates. He recalled Jennifer Aniston coming to him atone point, “in a kind of weird but loving way,” and saying that the group knewhe was drinking again. “‘We can smell it,'” she told him. Another time, thecast confronted him in his dressing room.
He also revealed that right after shooting Chandler and Monica’s wedding in2001, he “got driven back to the treatment center — at the height of myhighest point in friends the highest point in my career, the iconic momenton the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”
Immediately after shooting Chandler and Monica’s wedding in 2001, Perry wastaken to rehab. He has done 15 stints in treatment. He told the New YorkTimes in a new interview, “It’s still a day-to-day process of getting better.Every day.” (Photo: Danny Feld/NBCU Photo Bank
Among other revelations in the book, according to the NYT , is that Perryhad short-lived, alcohol-induced erectile dysfunction amid his struggles. Healso carried his top teeth in a baggie in his pants pocket to his dentistafter he bit into peanut butter toast and they all fell out.
Perry shared for the first time that he’s 18 months sober, something hewouldn’t reveal at the start of his press tour last week. Last year’s famous_friends_ reunion on HBO Max shot in April 2021, meaning he was newly drug-and alcohol-free. (Much was made at the time over his slurred speech, whichwas attributed to dental work.) He said he works every day at his sobriety andemploys “a couple of people on the payroll to keep me safe,” including a sobercompanion. He’s become a mentor for others and sponsors three members inAlcoholics Anonymous.
“It’s still a day-to-day process of getting better. Every day. It doesn’t endbecause I” wrote a book, which he started, on the Notes app of his iPhone,while hospitalized for five months after his colon burst due to his opioidabuse.
Over the weekend excerpts from the book ran in the UK’s The Times _,_including one about Perry’s 2018 hospitalization when his colon burst. He wasgiven a 2% chance of surviving as he went into emergency surgery, was in acoma for two weeks and had a colostomy bag for nine months as he recovered. Healmost didn’t make it to the hospital in the first place.
At the time, he was living in a sober living house in Southern California. Hehadn’t had a bowel movement in 10 days and felt “like my body was going toburst. Like my insides were trying to force their way out. This was the no-f***ing-around kind of pain.” He was advised by a staffer to take an Epsomsalts bath to alleviate the “discomfort.” He recalled being naked and in suchpain he was “howling like a dog being ripped to shreds by coyotes.”
His assistant Erin was there and suggested he go to the hospital, but thestaff thought Perry was exhibiting “‘drug-seeking behavior. He’s going to askfor drugs at the hospital.'” After a standoff with employees trying to blockthem from leaving , Erin drove him to the hospital as Perry recalled that his”belly was twisting in agony.”
“If I were just doing this to get drugs, then I deserved an Oscar,” hethought. He was taken into surgery and didn’t open his eyes again for twoweeks.
“The first thing that happened when I lapsed into a coma was that I aspiratedinto my breathing tube, vomiting ten days’ worth of toxic s*** directly intomy lungs,” he wrote. “My lungs didn’t like that very much — enter instantpneumonia — and that is when my colon exploded. Let me repeat for those in theback: my colon exploded!”
He underwent a seven-hour surgery during which time his loved ones gathered atthe hospital and received the grim news that he had “a 2 per cent chance ofmaking it through the night.” He made it through and was put on life support,via an ECMO machine (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), for two weeks whilehe remained comatose.
“Eventually, my eyes magically opened,” he wrote. “The first thing I saw wasmy mother. ‘Your colon exploded,’ Mom said. ‘It’s amazing that you’re alive,’she said. ‘Your resiliency is incredible. And with some life changes, you’regonna be OK And they can remove the colostomy bag in about nine months.'”
He didn’t move or talk for two more weeks, he said, and he had to relearn howto walk.
“I had been inches from death because of something that I had done,” he wrote.I was attached to 50 machines, and I would have to learn to walk again. Ihated myself. I almost killed myself. The shame, the loneliness, the regretwere too much to handle. I just lay there, trying to deal with all of it, butthere was no dealing with it. It had already been done. I was afraid to die,which was in direct opposition to my actions.”
Excerpt in a second The Times Perry recalled going though his 55-pill-a-daypainkiller habit during the friends era .
“I’ve detoxed more than 25 times in my life — but the first was when I was26,” he wrote. “My Vicodin habit had kicked in badly. If you watch Season 3 of_friends_ , I hope you’ll be horrified at how thin I am by the end of theseason (opioids f*** with your appetite, plus they make you vomitconstantly),” he wrote. “You can track the trajectory of my addiction if yougauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’salcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots ofpills.”
By the end of that season is when he was taking the 55 pills a day “otherwiseI’d get so sick. It was a full-time job: making calls, seeing doctors, fakingmigraines, finding crooked nurses who would give me what I need.”
During that time, he made the movie Almost Heroes with Chris Farley. the_Saturday Night Live_ star “was just as funny as you’d imagine, though hisaddictions, plus mine, meant that we barely were able to even finish thef***ing thing,” Perry wrote. “I was shooting friends and Almost Heroes atthe same time, and I was tired. The pills were not doing what they used todo.” He recalled retching on the set between exchanges with directorChristopher Guest, explaining, “I vomited behind trees, behind rocks, inladies’ rooms.”
Before the movie came out, Farley died at the end of 1997.
“His disease had progressed faster than mine had. Plus, I had a healthy fearof the word ‘heroin,’ a fear we did not share,” he wrote. “I punched a holethrough Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room wall [on the Friends set] when Ifound out. I had to promote Almost Heroes two weeks after he died; I foundmyself publicly discussing his death from drugs and alcohol. I was high theentire time.”
Perry wrote about multiple trips to treatment and detoxing for the first of 25times during the friends years. However, he didn’t work toward getting tothe surface at what was causing his addiction.
“I had learned precisely nothing about what was wrong with me,” he wrotefollowing his first rehab stay. “I hadn’t learned about Alcoholics Anonymous,or how to live a sober life; I’d just gotten off the Vicodin.” He drank 68days later, and then eventually resumed taking pills in a harrowing cycle thatwent on for years.
Perry was interviewed by Diane Sawyer for a special that will air on ABC Newson Friday at 8 pm He’s also doing a book tour, which kicks off Nov. 2 in NewYork City.
Get general information on mental health and locate treatment services inyour area. Contact Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services AdministrationTreatment Referral Helpline at 1-877-SAMHSA7 (1-877-726-4727). Speak to a liveperson, Monday through Friday from 8 am to 8 pm ET.