- Matthew Perry said he was taken back to a treatment center after shooting his wedding scene on Friends.
- In his forthcoming memoir, Perry writes about his alcohol and drug addiction.
Matthew Perry said that he was driven back to a treatment center immediately after filming the Friends scene where his character Chandler Bing marries Monica Geller.
"I married Monica and got driven back to the treatment center — 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," Perry said in an interview with The New York Times ahead of the release of his book.
Perry, 53, talked about his forthcoming memoir "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing," where he discussed his alcohol and drug addiction.
The "Friends" actor described a relationship with drugs and alcohol that started when he was 14 years old and encapsulated a large portion of his life.
"I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it. When you're a drug addict, it's all math. I go to this place, and I need to take three. And then I go to this place, and I'm going to take five because I'm going to be there longer," Perry told the Times. "It's exhausting but you have to do it or you get very, very sick. I wasn't doing it to feel high or to feel good. I certainly wasn't a partyer; I just wanted to sit on my couch, take five Vicodin and watch a movie. That was heaven for me. It no longer is."
He also told the Times that on several instances his castmates would confront him concerned about his experience. In one instance, Perry said it "hit like a sledgehammer" when Jennifer Aniston who played Rachel Green on the show told him "in a kind of weird but loving way," that the group knew he was drinking again.
Perry has been forthcoming about his opioid addiction including revealing a near-death experience while dealing with a gastrointestinal perforation that caused his colon to burst when he was 49. Perry said he was in a coma for two weeks, stayed in the hospital for five months, and used a colostomy bag for nine months, Insider previously reported.
"There is a hell," Perry writes, according to the Times. "Don't let anyone tell you different. I've been there; it exists; end of discussion."