Matthew Perry promotes his new memoir. (Photo: Santiago Felipe/Getty Images)
Matthew Perry has already heard from some of his Friends co-stars about his lively new book, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, which hit bookstores on Tuesday. In it he describes years of struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.
“Well, the book’s been out for a day,” Perry said dryly when asked for her answers during a livestream from City Hall in New York City on Wednesday. “So I’ve heard from a few of them, which is very nice, and I’m sure I’ll be hearing from all of them. But that’s the amazing thing about what’s happening with this book. It touches everyone’s heart.”
Perry later said thousands of people had already come to him, convinced they could stop using substances because he had done it. He has said he is now 18 months sober. During the livestream, he noted that he received help on a daily basis.
He also answered a question about who would play him if the book was ever made into a movie.
The younger version of Perry would be played by none other than his co-star in the 2009 body-swapping film 17 Again.
“Well, Zac Efron did it once,” he said.
Perry said he would take on the role later.
“I would play myself after the coma and after that horrible night, five months in the hospital, then I would take the role I think,” he said, referring to one of the scarier stories to emerge from the book.
In 2018, Perry spent five months in the hospital recovering after his colon ruptured from opioid abuse. He was in a coma and alive for two weeks. He had 14 surgeries. He also had to use a colostomy bag for nine months, which left him “covered in my own shit,” he estimated, 50 to 60 times.
“Doctors told my family I had a two percent chance of survival,” Perry told People. “I was hooked up to a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs. And that means Hail Mary. Nobody survives that.”
The story goes on
Still, he admitted to calling his drug dealer when he got home.
Matthew Perry appears in a 1998 episode of Friends with co-stars Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox. (Photo: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection)
In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, Perry also said that he once drank vodka by the gallon and took 55 Vicodin a day. He would accomplish the latter by faking back injuries and migraines — he also had “eight doctors on call at the same time” — or simply going to open houses and rummaging through medicine cabinets.
“I think they were like, ‘Oh, there’s no way Chandler stole from us,'” Perry said.
In all, Perry has said he’s spent $9 million trying to get sober, including countless stints in rehab and detox facilities. At one of them, a treatment center in Switzerland where he was still taking pills, his heart stopped beating for five minutes.
Looking back on everything he’s been through, Perry told Sawyer he was grateful to his “Friends” co-stars, especially Jennifer Aniston. She’s the one who “got in touch the most” and even confronted him about his problem.
Perry has also spoken out about his personal relationships over the years, including how he and Valerie Bertinelli once made out next to her then-husband Eddie Van Halen when he passed out, and how he lost his virginity to Tricia Leigh Fisher. Half-sister to the late Carrie Fisher after years of believing he was impotent.
He also mourned the loss of River Phoenix, his co-star in Jimmy Reardon’s One Night in the Life, who died in 1993. “It always seems to be the really talented guys that go down,” he wrote. “Why do original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?”
He has apologized for the reference to Reeves since the excerpt surfaced, saying he “choose a random name”.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s Treatment Counseling Helpline at 800-662-HELP (4357).