Matthew Perry predicted less than a year before his death his addiction “disease” would kill him.
Matthew Perry predicted less than a year before his death his addiction ‘disease’ would kill him
The recovering drink and drug addict – who spent years battling addictions behind the scenes on ‘Friends’ – made the now-poignant premonition in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’, released in November 2022.
He said in the book about his addiction: “Not only do I have the disease, but I also have it bad.
“I have it as bad as you can have it, in fact. It’s back-to-the-wall time all the time. It’s going to kill me.”
Matthew went into graphic detail in his book about how he had nearly died and was given a one in 50 chance of surviving after his colon burst due to opiate use.
The actor also used the memoir to make the poignant admission he couldn’t bring himself to watch himself playing Chandler Bing on ‘Friends’ as he hated the way his looks changed on the sitcom depending on what drug he was abusing.
He said: “I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine.
“I could tell season by season by how I looked. That’s why I don’t wanna watch it, because that’s what I see.
“I was taking 55 Vicodin a day, I weighed 128 lbs, I was on ‘Friends’ getting watched by 30 million people – and that’s why I can’t watch the show, ‘cause I was brutally thin.
“I had a rule that I would never drink or do drugs while working.
“Because I had too much respect for the five people I was working with.
“So I was never wasted while working. The thing that always makes me cry... is that it’s not fair.
“It’s not fair that I had to go through this disease while the other five didn’t.”
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