“Friends” star Matthew Perry openly struggled with addiction for most of his life. His candor helped others who grapple with their own addictions feel less ashamed. In his memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry catalogued his journey to sobriety and shared the high cost of his life.
“I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” the actor told the New York Times. In his memoir, he said he spent $7 million on 15 visits to rehab facilities. At the time of that interview, Perry told the “New York Times” he was 18 months sober.
After his death on Oct. 28, people recalled Perry's lifetime struggle with drugs and alcohol especially the way Perry that confronted it openly. From the outset, addiction and sobriety took centerstage in the memoir and he even dedicated the book to “all the sufferers out there.”
In the prologue, Perry admits that he spent much of his life in rehab.
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“I lived half my life in one form of another of treatment center or sober living house. Which is fine when you are twenty-four years old, less fine when you re forty-two years old. Now I was forty-nine, still struggling to get this monkey off my back,” he wrote.
Sobriety on the set of ‘Friends’
Over the years, the public watched Perry at his best and worst moments often when he was at the pinnacle of his career playing Chandler Bing on “Friends.” While filming Chandler and Monica’s wedding in season seven he was living in a rehab facility, according to his memoir.
“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,” he wrote.
When the show ended after 10 seasons, his castmates felt emotional and cried while Perry watched dry-eyed.
“I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking, or if I was just generally dead inside,” he said in his memoir.
The hard work of being sober
He admitted that being sober takes a lot of dedication and a constant focus.
“It’s still a day-to-day process of getting better. Every day. It doesn’t end because I did this,” he told the "New York Times."
As he tried understanding how he interacts with addiction and sobriety, Perry stumbled upon a truth for him. “I’m capable of staying sober unless anything happens,” he shared in his book.
“When I was sober, I’d think back to the recent past and wonder why I’d ever picked up pills or drugs after getting clean,” he continued.
For Perry, sobriety was hard-fought and he went to unimaginable lengths to achieve it.
“There is a hell,” he wrote in his memoir. “Don’t let anyone tell you different. I’ve been there: it exists: end of discussion.”
The “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” actor certainly faced his share of hellish health experiences because of drugs and alcohol use. In 2019, Perry’s colon ruptured — likely related to drug and alcohol abuse — and he underwent a seven-hour emergency surgery, according to his memoir. After, he needed a colostomy bag for nine months. His therapist encouraged Perry to equate using drugs to using a colostomy bag “for the rest of his life.”
“I have not been interested in taking a drug since,” he wrote in his memoir. “I’ve surrendered, but to the winning side, not the losing. I’m not longer mired in an impossible battle with drugs and alcohol.”
Perry admitted that he could only publish his memoir because he “felt very secure in his sobriety.”
“It took very hard work to get there. Because you can’t write a book like this and then, you know, you appear drunk at your local bar,” he said in an interview with Jess Cagle at New York City’s Town Hall according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Helping others get sober
During his book tour, Perry spoke of wanting to offer hope to others who are struggling with addiction.
“The kind of message that I guess I give out with this book is don’t give up. There’s help out there. I’ve been helped on a daily basis. If I didn’t get help, I wouldn’t be sitting here. It’s all about finding somebody that knows more than you know about this stuff and listening,” he said in an interview with Jess Cagle at New York City’s Town Hall according to “The Hollywood Reporter.”
In a November 2022 interview with Tom Power about the memoir, Perry shared how he hoped others would remember him.
“I’d like to be remembered as somebody who lived well, loved well, was a seeker,” he said. “And his paramount thing is that he wants to help people. That’s what I want.”
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