Matthew Perry Credits friends for saving his life during his darkest days ofaddiction to alcohol and pills, but an intervention held by the cast amid hisstruggles was “not going to work” in getting him sober.
The 53-year-old actor, whose memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big TerribleThing , __ is __ at the top of bestseller list, spoke about recovery withElizabeth Vargas for her Heart of the Matter podcast for Partnership to EndAddiction.
Perry, who had his first drink at 14 and was already struggling when he landed_friends_ in 1994, he said “stifled the drinking a little bit when I got thatjob because for the whole time I was like, ‘You can’t screw this up. This isthe best job in the world.’ … And the job saved my life in many ways. But … Iwas drinking every night. Then it got worse and worse and worse and worse.” Hewent to rehab for the first time at age 27 “because I weighed 130 pounds and Iwas very, very ill … and on friends at the same time.”
His co-star and friend Jennifer Aniston called him out on his drinking,telling him they could smell it. He told Vargas that she wasn’t the only one.
“Lisa [Kudrow] said something” as well, Perry revealed. Then “at one pointeverybody was in my dressing room after a run-through that I had been reallyshaky in” for an intervention. “But that’s not going to work,” he said of thewell-meaning effort.”You need a professional. You need somebody who reallyknows [addiction]. Because what people don’t really understand is if there’san intervention, the only thing you have to do to end an intervention is justsay: ‘No. No, get out of my house.’ And then it’s over. If you have aprofessional, somebody who does this for a living, and an interventionist anda plane waiting and then you go to rehab, that’s the way to do it. But 50people saying, ‘You should quit drinking.’ I can ‘t quit drinking. What areyou talking about? And I can’t let you know that I can’t stop drinking becausethen you’ll try to stop me from drinking.”
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The “Friends” crew: Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matt LeBlanc as JoeyTribbiani, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing,Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, David Schwimmer as Ross Geller. (Photo: NBCUPhoto Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
Perry recalled going home and drinking after the first time Aniston privatelycalled him out on his addiction. “I couldn’t stop,” he said. Aniston continuedtrying to help him, a reflection of the “lovely person she is,” Perry said.She also tried tough love. “The second time I came back from rehab, she said,’I’ve been really mad at you,'” because his addiction had “put the show injeopardy.” Perry recalled replying, “‘Honey, if you know what I’ve beenthrough, you wouldn’t be mad at me.’ But she had — and why would she? — noidea what I’d gone through to be sober at that time.”
Perry estimates he spent $9 million to get sober. He has been to 65 detoxcenters. while on friends — the show which paid him $1.14 million an episodein its final years — he would steal pills from real estate open houses to feedhis 55-Vicodin-a-day pill habit. At one point, he had a 2% chance of livingafter his colon exploded due to Oxycontin abuse. Even after that, he hadanother brush with death — when heart stopped for five minutes during surgery.
Perry reiterated while talking to talked to Vargas, who is also in recoveryfrom alcoholism, that addiction “is a disease.” He said when that finallyclicked — that it is actually a sickness — it helped him in his recovery.
It was when he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and “I was very thin, very sick,”he recalled. “And they put me in this office with a religious fellow. I don’tknow exactly what he was, but he was talking to me … and the last thing hesaid was, ‘And it’s not your fault.’ And I went, “What? Say that again?” Andhe said, “It’s not your fault. … You have a disease.” I mean, I can’t tell youwhat that meant to me. I didn’t know. I just thought I was weak and I neededthis thing that other people didn’t need. And then I started to learn that itwas a disease and I was so freed by that.”
And it’s a disease that runs in Perry’s family. He said his father, actor JohnBennett Perry, also struggled. However, they had very different addictionjourneys.
“My dad was pretty much how I learned to drink,” Perry said. “He would havelike five vodka tonics and then bring the sixth one into bed. But he alwayswoke up at 7 o’clock in the morning and … went to work. He was a veryfunctional alcoholic.”
When he stopped drinking, it was like a switch.
“One night he had one too many drinks and he fell through a bush or somethinglike that and the next day his wife said, ‘Do you really want to keep livingthis way?’ And he went for a walk” to consider his circumstances “and quitdrinking [that day]. I’ve been to 6,000 AA meetings. I’ve been to 14 treatmentcenters. I’ve been to a mental institution. And you quit by going for awalk?!” he said.
Perry is currently 18 months sober. “I couldn’t write this book unless I wasreally strong in my sobriety, which I am now,” he said, “And I’m very grateful