American – Canadian Actor, Matthew Langford Perry who is best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the NBC television sitcom Friends, which ran from 1994 to 2004, has shared details of his battle with substance abuse in his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which drops November 1.
In a snippet obtained by Page Six, the actor spoke out about how his addiction to opioids and alcohol affected the way he looked on screen.
He revealed that those watching the NBC comedy series can figure out how severe his drug use was based off his weight and beard length.
He said that in the episodes where he looked bigger in size, he was drinking a lot of alcohol, while in parts where he appeared skinnier, he was abusing pills.
Perry said his addiction started in 1997 after he got into an accident and was given Vicodin. The comedian had earlier admitted that during the height of his career, he was taking 55 painkillers per day and dropped down to only 128 pounds.
Perry, 53, laid bare the intimate details of his battle with substance abuse in his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which drops on November 1.
.’You can track the trajectory for my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season,’ he wrote in the book.
Matthew Perry has shared a tongue-in-cheek guide to how you can tell what drugs he was using during his years in Friends, simply based off his appearance in the show.
While he came off as the hilarious and heartwarming guy who always had a smile on his face on the screen, behind-the-scenes, the star was facing a downward spiral of drug addiction, alcohol use, and overdoses that left him with just a two per cent chance of survival.
Perry told People magazine recently while discussing his book that he turned to drugs to deal with the enormous fame and pressure that came with starring in one of the most popular shows of all time. He revealed he needed 14 surgeries on his stomach and has been in rehab 15 different times as a result of his drug and alcohol use.
Perry spent 28 days at a treatment center in Minnesota in 1997, but his struggles didn’t end there.
In May 2000, his battle with alcohol and drug use had become so severe that he was admitted to the hospital with pancreatitis, a potentially deadly condition that develops from heavy drinking.
And while he insisted that he ‘never drank on set,’ he told the Times that he would often come to work ‘extremely’ hungover.
‘It’s so horrible to feel that way and have to work and be funny on top of that,’ the actor said, adding that he would sometimes find himself sweating and shaking on the Friends set.
To the public, Perry’s battles with addiction ended after that, but he almost lost his life a few years ago, at age 49, when his colon burst due to opioid overuse.
He spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital, and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months.
He revealed that the doctors told his family that he had a two per cent chance to live. He was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for his heart and lungs.
Now, he told the outlet that he is ‘pretty healthy,’ and that he feels he is finally ‘safe’ from going back to the ‘dark side,’ but he didn’t reveal how long he has been sober.
He added that going through the near-death experience helped open his eyes.
‘The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life,’ he recalled his therapist telling him, adding, ‘A little window opened and I crawled through it and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore.
‘There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived. So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason.’
It could be recalled that the actor became an international sensation practically overnight after he landed the role as Chandler Bing in Friends in 1994.
