Matthew Perry, widely renowned for his portrayal of Chandler Bing on the hit sitcom Friends, shared candid stories about his life, career, and struggles with addiction at a capacity-crowd event hosted by Penn Medicine Princeton Health and Princeton House on November 4, 2022. Perry discussed his new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, with Emmy award-winning journalist and television host Elizabeth Vargas.
The numbers are staggering. Perry, who describes the cathartic effect of his first drink at age 14, at one point was taking 1,800 mg of hydrocodone a day. He has had 14 rehab stays and 65 detoxes, spending $9 million on recovery.
“I am an addict,” he says. “In the beginning, I didn’t know what was happening. The disease is progressive. Your mind says ‘give me a drink,’ and then your body says ‘now give me everything you did last time and more.’”
Perry, who peppered the interview with his sharp wit, describes drinking every night while filming Friends and working while hung over. Repeated trips to rehab had only a short-term effect; Perry would start using alcohol and then prescription drugs again and again, even knowing it would destroy his life.
He nearly died several times, including once when his heart stopped beating for five minutes.
“Why, why, why did I survive?” Perry recalls. “I knew there had to be a reason – and I knew it was in the area of helping people. Even if it was sponsoring one person…you watch it come on in their eyes, when they start to get it.”
Ultimately, he’s helping others through his memoir, which he started by typing 144 pages in the notes section of his phone “just with thumbs.” The harder part was when he had to read it for the audiobook recording and he could barely recognize himself in the descriptions.
“Someone once said to me, ‘it’s not your fault, you have a disease,’ and I can’t tell you what that meant to me,” he says. “I was so freed by that.”
When Vargas asked what advice he’d offer to others who are suffering, Perry emphasized the critical role of professional help.
“Raise your hand as quickly as humanly possible,” he says. “Lift up that thousand-pound phone and ask for help right away.”
