Matthew Perry spoke about his addictions and how they affected his personal life and his work in the acclaimed series friends. The actor is known for having played Chandler Bing in the sitcom created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane. His participation in the program catapulted him to stardom, but there was a time when his professional career and his health had a considerable decline.
This was stated by Perry himself in an interview with the magazine People on the occasion of the launch of his memoirs Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. During the talk, the interpreter recalled the darkest stages of the period in which he consumed large amounts of alcohol and drugs. In his words, in the years when the show was already positioned in the minds of viewers, the filming of the episodes became quite complicated for him.
Matthew Perry’s addictions affected him drastically
He revealed that, when he was at the height of his popularity, his dependence on opioids and pain medication was concerning, as he would ingest up to 55 Vicodin pills daily. Therefore, he lost weight fast by losing approximately 58kg in weight. This was what he said:
“I didn’t know how to stop. If the police came to my house and told me: ‘If you drink tonight, we are going to take you to jail’, I would start packing. She couldn’t stop because disease and addiction are progressive. So it gets worse as you get older.”
In addition to this, he mentioned that the changes in weight and alterations to his physique were quite noticeable with the passing of the seasons. In fact, in a fragment of his memoirs he writes (via):
“If you check my weight from season to season [en Friends], when I am overweight, it is alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When my skin hangs, it’s a lot of pills.”
He also acknowledged in his conversation with People that, fortunately, his co-stars were quite understanding and helped him in his rehabilitation processes.
“They understood me and were patient. It’s like penguins. Penguins, in the wild, when you’re sick, or when you’re badly hurt, the other penguins surround you and hold you. They walk around it until the penguin can walk on its own. That’s what the cast did for me.”
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However, the strongest revelation made by Matthew Perry, who is currently 53 years old, was that when he was 49 he went through an extremely strong relapse – he has relapsed several times and has entered rehab on 15 different occasions.
This eventually landed him in the hospital, where he was treated for gastrointestinal problems, as well as his colon bursting as a reaction to the large number of medications he took. He said the following:
“The doctors told my family that I had a 2% chance of living. They put me on a thing called an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs. And that’s what they call an Ave Maria. No one survives that.”
Fortunately, today Perry has been sober for a long time: “I’m grateful to be alive, that’s for sure. And that gives me the ability to do anything,” he asserts.
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing It will go on sale on November 1, 2022.
Jose Roberto Landaverde Film buff and music lover. I am fascinated by writing, listening, reading and commenting on everything related to the seventh art. I am a fan of Rocky and Back to the Future and of course one day I will climb the “Philly Steps” and drive a DeLorean. Faithful believer that the cinema is the best teleportation machine, and also that we can all see ourselves represented on the big screen. Constantly, like Scott Pilgrim, I ask myself: “Does bread make you fat?”
