What Matthew Perry Has Revealed About His Journey With Addiction
Matthew Perry recently released a book detailing his journey with addiction. He has struggled with addiction since he had his first sip of alcohol at the age of 14. Later on, in his acting career, he became addicted to pills when he was given some after suffering an injury while jet skiing.
Perry has been doing a publicity tour discussing the content of his book as well as his struggles over the years with addiction. He has said that he wrote his book in order to help people who struggle with the same disease that he has, which is addiction. He knows that the disease is something he has to live with for the rest of his life and something that he has to continue fighting, but he is in a good place now, having been sober for 18 months.
8 Matthew Perry Said Drugs And Alcohol Made Him Feel Normal
Perry stated in an interview on The View that whenever he drank a lot or took pills, a sense of euphoria would come over him, and he would feel more "normal" instead of feeling off if he didn't engage in those things. "It's an obsession in your mind and a phenomenon of craving," Perry said. He said most people who take Vicodin feel kind of sick while on the drug, but for him, suddenly when taking those pills, "the world made sense."
7 A Doctor Once Told Matthew Perry That His Addictions Weren't His Fault
Once the pills he was taking got him down to 130 pounds, he went to his first treatment center and a doctor there that he had been speaking to told him that the addictions he was suffering from weren't his fault. He said those words from the doctor made him feel a lot better because he realized it was a disease he had that many other people suffer from.
6 Matthew Perry Would Steal Drugs From Open Houses
In his interview with Diane Sawyer, Perry admitted to going to open houses to look in people's medicine cabinets for pills that he could steal. He knew he could get away with doing that because he knew people wouldn't believe that "Chandler" would steal from them.
5 Matthew Perry Thought Fame Would Fix Him
"I wanted fame more than anything in the world. I got it and six months later I went 'Oh, this isn't fixing what I thought it would fix,'" Perry said of his fame after landing the life-changing role on Friends. He said his job on the show did help him with his addiction because he made a deal with himself that he would never drink or take any drugs while he was working, even though he would show up "insanely hungover." Eventually, his cast members caught wind of what was going on, because they could smell the alcohol on him.
4 Matthew Perry Almost Died In 2018
During Perry's interview with Diane Sawyer he told the story about when his colon exploded in 2018 due to all the abuse he had put his body through. He was put on a life support machine as a hail mary and his parents were told that he had a 2 percent chance of making it through the night. By some miracle, Perry ended up surviving the near-death experience and he lived to tell the tale.
3 Matthew Perry Was Supposed To Be In Don't Look Up
While on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Perry talked about how he was originally supposed to be in the Netflix movie, Don't Look Up with Meryl Streep, but due to his heart stopping for five minutes, he had to pull out of the project. He had CPR performed on him, and during the process, had eight ribs broken.
2 Matthew Perry Thought He Was Impotent
According to Yahoo! Entertainment, Perry thought he was impotent for several years as a teenager, because he would drink a lot before he attempted to have sex due to nervousness and due to the alcohol, he "couldn't perform." He wrote in his memoir about losing his virginity to Tricia Leigh Fisher, who showed him that he didn't have a problem with impotence when he was 18 years old, and he also said in his book that he thanked her by "sleeping with almost every woman in Southern California."
1 Matthew Perry Punched A Hole In Jennifer Aniston's Dressing Room Wall
Upon learning of the death of Chris Farley due to his addiction problems, Perry punched a hole in the wall of Jennifer Aniston's dressing room on Friends. He told Stephen Colbert on his talk show that it didn't scare him enough to stop abusing drugs and alcohol himself, though. On The View he did talk about how he would reach certain points in his addiction where it did scare him and that's when he would reach out and get help from the right people.
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