Matthew Perry Recalls Struggling With Addiction During 'Friends,' Getting Down to 128 Pounds

November 01, 2024

Matthew Perry is opening up about his struggles with addiction. Ahead of the release of his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the 53-year-old actor tells People about how his struggles with alcohol and opioids impacted his time on Friends.

Perry was 24 when he was cast as Chandler Bing on the long-running sitcom. At the time, his struggle with alcohol wasn't totally unmanageable. "I could handle it, kind of," he says.

Eventually, though, things spiraled to the point where he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and was down to 128 pounds.

"I didn't know how to stop," he admits. "If the police came over to my house and said, 'If you drink tonight, we're going to take you to jail,' I'd start packing. I couldn't stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older."

The years on Friends weren't all negative though, as Perry recalls, "There were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, 'That should tell me something.'"

Through it all, Perry says, his castmates "were understanding, and they were patient."

"It's like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own," he explains. "That's kind of what the cast did for me."

At the end of the show's run in 2004, Perry says he "was really entrenched in a lot of trouble." That trouble manifested in 15 trips to rehab, 14 surgeries on his stomach and a near-death experience when he was 49.

"I'm pretty healthy now," he says. "... I'm an extremely grateful guy. I'm grateful to be alive, that's for sure. And that gives me the possibility to do anything."

One of those things Perry wants to do is fall in love and build a family. He broke things off with his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz, last year, and has ended nearly every relationship he's been in up to this point.

"That was me afraid," he tells People. "That is what I manifest, something that's wrong with them. And then I break up with them. But there can't be something wrong with everyone. I'm the common denominator. I left first because I thought they were going to annihilate me."

While Perry admits that he "had a tremendous amount of fear" about love, he says that, "through a lot of work, I've got over that fear."

"I'm going to learn as I go. The thing that's changed about me is I have no interest in hanging out with somebody that I don't know or somebody that I'm not that into," he says. "The next person I really take seriously is somebody that I'm going to be in love with and not be scared by the things that used to scare me."

As for who that person will be, Perry says he's looking for "somebody who's self-supporting."

"In every way, but monetarily especially because I got burned a few times by women who wanted my money, not really caring about me," he says. "A sense of humor, beautiful inside and out, caring. This is really important, somebody who can have a back and forth with me."

He'd also like to have kids, telling the outlet of being a dad, "I think I'd be great. I really do. I grew up with a lot of little kids around me, and that's probably why, but I can't wait."

Health, a partner and kids are all things Perry is confident he'll be able to have now that he's sober.

"I'm not run by the fear I used to be run by so everything's kind of different," he says. "I'm feeling more confident and I'm not afraid of love anymore, so the next girl I go out with better watch out."

All this and more is discussed in Perry's upcoming memoir, which he finally decided to pen when he felt that he was "safe from going into the dark side of everything again."

"I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober -- and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction -- to write it all down," he explains. "And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people."

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is due out Nov. 1.

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