The Daily Observer London Desk: Reporter- Sarah Marshal
Released in 2021, the book chronicled the exacerbation of Perry’s addiction under the “white-hot flame of fame” after he shot to international stardom, aged 24, as the wise-cracking Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom Friends.
“Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name,” he wrote in the book’s opening passage. “My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
In the book, Perry recalled drinking heavily through the first two seasons of Friends, although he said he was never drunk or high on set, and then becoming addicted to the opiate pain medication Vicodin after a jet ski accident while filming Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek in 1996.
By the end of the 10th series of Friends, Perry became “entrenched in a lot of trouble”, he revealed years later.
At one point during his time on Friends, he was taking up to 55 Vicodin painkillers a day and was down to just 128lb (just over 9st) in weight. He said in a 2016 interview that he did not remember filming three seasons of the show because he was a “little out of it at the time”.
In his memoir, Perry also noted that fans would have been able to tell whether he was drinking or taking drugs in certain seasons, depending on his appearance.
“When I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills; when I have a goatee, it’s a lot of pills,” he said.Perry was eventually confronted by his concerned co-star Jennifer Aniston, who starred in Friends as Rachel Green.
