The period in which he lived with addictions dates back to the time when he was filming the successful television comedy. He confessed that at that time he could take 55 vicodins daily, a powerful pain reliever.
Matthew Perry shared his struggle with drug and alcohol addiction while filming the hit TV show ‘Friends,’ and explains why he hasn’t re-watched the series. pic.twitter.com/EyWxU47Su1
—CNN (@CNN)
December 6, 2022
As he recounted in a new interview in the CNNin which he said he had a self-imposed rule of not drinking and not using substances during the recordings “because he had a lot of respect for the five people he worked with”, speaking of his co-stars: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc.
“Alcoholism didn’t care that he was on Friends,” Perry said. In addition to these facts, she regretted what she had to go through “due to this disease while the other five did not.”
That’s why I can’t watch the show, because I was brutally skinny
“I had to fight this and I still have to,” he stressed during the television talk. In this interview, he also recounted his reasons for not being able to see the series again: “I took 55 vicodins a day, weighed 58 kilos, was on Friends, a series seen by more than 30 million people. That’s why I can’t watch the show, because he was brutally skinny. I could be drinking, taking opiates, doing cocaine… I could remember season by season based on how I looked.”
“That’s why I don’t want to see it, because that’s what I see”, recalled the actor.