Matthew Perry was always vocal about his struggles with addiction, often using his platform to raise awareness and help others facing similar challenges. The actor, best known for his iconic role as Chandler Bing on Friends, battled substance abuse even during the height of his fame. His openness about his journey, including multiple rehab stints and ongoing efforts to stay sober, was evident. However, Perry never lets his fans see him struggling on-screen while he is living behind the scenes in a rehab facility during one of the most important scenes of his Friends character.
In Matthew Perry’s memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, the late actor opened up about the treatment he was receiving for his addiction while filming Season 7 of Friends, particularly the episode “The One with Monica and Chandler’s Wedding.” He shared, “I married Monica (Courteney Cox) and got driven back to the treatment centre — at the height of my highest point in Friends, the highest point in my career, the iconic moment on the iconic show — in a pickup truck helmed by a sober technician.”
While the rest of the Friends cast was aware of his addiction and supported him throughout, Perry revealed that Jennifer Aniston told him in a “weird but loving way” that they knew he was drinking again because they could smell it. He admitted that hearing “we” hit him like a sledgehammer.
Elsewhere in the memoir, Perry also shared that while his co-stars were sobbing after filming the finale of Friends in 2004, he “felt nothing.” He admitted that he was taking buprenorphine, a detox medication that helps addicts withdraw from harder opioids. He expressed, “We had made 237 episodes, including this last one, called, appropriately enough, ‘The Last One.’ Aniston was sobbing — after a while, I was amazed she had any water left in her entire body. Even Matt LeBlanc was crying. But I felt nothing. I couldn’t tell if that was because of the opioid buprenorphine I was taking or if I was just generally dead inside.”
Sadly, Perry died on October 28, 2023, from the acute effects of ketamine use.
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