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Topics: Friends, Celebrity, TV and Film
Rachel Lang
Topics: Friends, Celebrity, TV and Film
Friends star Matthew Perry has revealed the eye-watering price tag that came with getting sober.
The 53-year-old sat down with The New York Times for an interview to promote his upcoming memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
It was during this sit down that he revealed the jaw-dropping amount of money he has sunk into his own sobriety.
"I've probably spent USD$9 million (AUD$14.1 million, £7.9 million) or something trying to get sober," the actor estimated.
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He then shared that he recently celebrated 18 months of being sober.
In a trailer for his upcoming sit-down with Diane Sawyer for ABC News, the veteran reporter asked about the time fellow Friends co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his alcohol abuse.
"Imagine how scary a moment that was. She was the one who reached out the most, you know. I'm really grateful to her for that," Perry said in the clip.
The Friends star also revealed that at one point he was taking '55 Vicodin a day'.
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"At the time I should have been the toast of the town," Perry said in the clip. "[Instead] I was in a dark room meeting nothing but drug dealers and completely alone."
Speaking to People, Perry revealed that his alcoholism was just taking root when he scored the role that would change his life on the astronomically popular sitcom.
Over the years, his addiction escalated, and, in 2018, it nearly cost him his life.
While Perry told the public that he had been hospitalised for a gastrointestinal perforation, the harsh truth was that his colon had burst from using opioids.
He was hospitalised for a total of five months, two weeks of which he was in a coma.
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Perry then had to wear a colostomy bag for nine months.
He told People that his Friends co-stars were all 'understanding', 'patient', and supportive.
Perry said: "It's like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own."
He added: "That's kind of what the cast did for me."
Perry played Chandler Bing from 1994 to 2004 on Friends alongside co-stars David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow.
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The popular sitcom aired for 10 seasons and made the cast household names.
Matthew's memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing is available on November 1.
Matthew Perry – The Diane Sawyer Interview airs on October 28 at 9pm on ABC.