Friends star Matthew Perry has opened up about how to tell if he’s relapsed, and the things to look out for when it comes to addiction.
The actor spoke candidly about his struggles and how he has managed to get clean…
He also revealed some key indicators that will signal to his family and friends if he ever loses his way again.
The fifty-three-year-old actor shared these details while promoting his new memoir on ABC News with Diane Sawyer.
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Now, we were first introduced to the Friends gang in 1994.
Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, and Joey burst onto our screens in September 1994.
It was an instant hit.
The comedy followed the friends, who live in the same New York apartment block, as they navigated through their mid-twenties.
We got to know the ins and outs of their everyday life…
And in a way, they became our own friends… It’s corny, but it’s true.
The show navigated some serious topics…
Ross and Rachel were not on a break. Period.
There were many iconic moments throughout the show’s ten seasons.
Rachel’s English trifle, Chandler’s nubbin, the time Joey got a Thanksgiving turkey stuck on his head…
The list could go on.
Despite the show coming to an end in 2004, it stands as one of the most-watched shows on Netflix, and its fanbase is as strong as ever.
They all embodied their characters completely.
And none of us can quite see them in anything else.
The gang earned a lot of money during those 10 years…
Allegedly, the cast was each on an eye-watering $1 million salary per episode in the later seasons of the show – a history-breaking figure.
Despite everyone’s love for the show, behind the scenes, one of the actors was struggling immensely to stay afloat.
Matthew Perry, who played the lovable Chandler Bing, has opened up about struggling with addiction while he was filming the show.
Perry has spilled all in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which is coming out on November 1.
“I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” he told PEOPLE.
“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.
“And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people.”
In his memoir, Perry admits that he almost died at the age of forty-nine after his colon burst from using opioids.
He shared that while he was being treated in hospital, “the doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live.”
“I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
Perry revealed that he first began with an alcohol addiction aged twenty-four while working on Friends, which slowly turned into drug use.
“I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” he admitted.
“But 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.'”
And after being admitted to rehab fifteen times over the years, Perry revealed that he’s sober and feeling a lot healthier.
He has also learned a lot: “It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education,” he said. “Your sober date changes, but that’s all that changes. You know everything you knew before, as long as you were able to fight your way back without dying, you learn a lot.”
And while he’s been through a lot over the years, Perry is incredibly grateful to be here to tell his story and help others.
“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.”
Perry opened up about the time he had to use a colostomy bag while recovering from his colon bursting due to an opioid overdose back in 2018.
Speaking with GQ about his memoir, Perry recalled the numerous time he used to wake up covered in his own feces.
He said that he’d wake up every so often to find his colostomy bag had “broken again.”
“I had s**t all over my face, all over my body, in the bed next door.
“When it breaks, it breaks. You have to get nurses,” he said.
When the time came for his colostomy bag to be removed, the operation was unsuccessful, and to his nightmare, it was replaced with an ileostomy bag.
He described it as “ten times worse.”
“You have to deal with an ileostomy bag eighteen, nineteen times a day. A lot of suicides with an ileostomy bag. People can’t take it,” Perry said.
He soon went under another surgery, which he claimed had “fixed things.”
And has since lived his life without a colostomy bag.
“I’m very grateful,” Perry said, despite adjusting to how his body looks with “plenty of scars.”
He added: “I look at them with gratitude because it helped me stay alive.”
Perry also opened up to Diane Sawyer about how his addiction led to unhealthy weight loss.
In the emotional interview, he saw an image of himself looking super skinny and broke down.
He also revealed the key things his family and friends will look out for if he ever relapses again…
“If I say, ‘I’m just going to chill at home alone tonight’… If I ever say, ‘I’m cured,'” Perry said of the tell tale signs he’s struggling again.
“My health is good. I’m doing really well now. It’s not that hard. I have a lot of experience now,” he said.
“I’ve got to help as many people as a can… It’s no fun to talk about this stuff. I don’t like talking about it, but I know it’s going to help people to talk about it,” he said.
If you or someone you know suffers with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.