Matthew Perry Felt ‘Unlovable’ Before Julia Roberts Split, Details OxyContin Addiction, ‘Friends’ End and More in Memoir
29.10.2022 - 00:43
/ usmagazine.com
The good, the bad and the ugly. Matthew Perry didn’t hold back in his Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing memoir — recalling his high-profile romances, addiction woes and Friends highs and lows.
“People would be surprised to know that I have mostly been sober since 2001,” he wrote in the book, which hits shelves on Tuesday, November 1. “Save for about sixty or seventy little mishaps over the years.”
The Odd Couple alum revealed that he has been battling drugs and alcohol addiction for decades. In fact, he was given phenobarbital when he was a baby to stop his colicky cries, a barbiturate he would later turn to during his lower points.
“When these mishaps occur, if you want to be sober, which I always did, you’d be given drugs to help you along,” he explained. “What drug may you ask? You guessed it: phenobarbital!”
In 1997, Perry got hooked on Vicodin after a jet skiing accident during a film shoot. He later became addicted to OxyContin after surgery for a colon explosion, which almost cost him his life.
“It was almost certain at that point that I was going to die. Was I unlucky that my colon exploded? Or was I lucky that it happened in the one room in Southern California where they could do something about it?” the former Go On star wrote of the scary experience. “Either way, I now faced a seven-hour surgery, which at least gave all my loved ones ample time to race to the hospital. As they arrived they were each told, ‘Matthew has a two percent chance of making it through the night.’ Everyone was so wrought with emotion that some crumbled to the ground right there in the hospital lobby. I will have to live out the rest of my days knowing that my mother and others heard those words.”
His struggle to stay sober — as well