Matthew Perry admits he ‘probably spent $9 million’ trying to get sober
Matthew Perry’s battle with addiction didn’t only nearly cost him his life — it came with a staggering price tag, too.
“I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” the “Friends” star admitted to The New York Times in an interview about his upcoming memoir detailing his harrowing near-death struggle.
By the time he almost died at the age of just 49, Perry also realized he had spent more than half his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities, he said.
His life as “a drug addict” — which he insists in the book is proof “there is a hell” — also cost him his dream of marriage and a family, he said.
“I think I’d be a great father,” he poignantly told the Times.
“I’m lonely,” he admitted, joking that his interviewer should connect him with a young woman she saw wearing a “Friends” sweatshirt.
“You should set me up with that girl … Just say, I know this guy, he’s as single as they come,” said Perry, now 53.
He told the Times that his addiction started with Budweiser and Andrès Baby Duck wine when he was 14 — but never led to heroin.
As well as downing vodka by the quart, he took Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin, calling life as a drug addict “all math.”
“I would fake back injuries. I would fake migraine headaches. I had eight doctors going at the same time,” Perry admitted of getting painkillers.
“I would wake up and have to get 55 Vicodin that day, and figure out how to do it,” he said.
“It’s exhausting but you have to do it or you get very, very sick.”
Perry insisted that he “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 said.
Perry told the Times he has now been sober for 18 months, calling it “still a day-to-day process of getting better. Every day.”
He said it “was hard to face all this stuff,” but worth it if it helps others still living in the same hell.
“Whenever I bumped into something that I didn’t really want to share, I would think of the people that I would be helping, and it would keep me going,” he told the paper.
“Now I feel better because it’s out. It’s out on a piece of paper. The ‘why’ I’m still alive is definitely in the area of helping people.”
“Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” will be published Nov. 1.
