Matthew Perry once prayed to God for fame. Now, his dream is to help others struggling with addiction

Click the play button above to listen to Matthew Perry's full conversation with Tom Power. When Matthew Perry set out to write his new memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he hoped it would reveal a truth he learned the hard way: seeing your dreams come true doesn't solve your problems. From 1994 to 2004, the Ottawa-raised actor starred as Chandler Bing on Friends, one of the biggest sitcoms in TV history. But he quickly discovered that success couldn't remedy his catastrophic addiction to alcohol and opiates. "Not many books have come from the side of the addict ... certainly not somebody who's been on one of their favourite shows or whatever," Perry said in a live interview with Q's Tom Power at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in Toronto. "That message is very powerful because I thought [fame] would fix everything. And you know, it didn't — I still wanted to drink every day." WATCH | Matthew Perry's full interview with Tom Power: In the book, Perry details his long journey with addiction, fame and recovery. His relationship with drugs started when he was just 30 days old and was prescribed a barbiturate for colic, which he believes had a lasting effect on his sleep. He had his first taste of alcohol at 14 and started drinking every night by the time he was around 18. "I finally felt at home, for the very first time, as soon as I drank alcohol," recalled Perry. "And I had a much different reaction than normal people have. Normal people have a drink and they feel a little, you know, woozy.… I have a drink and, for the first time in three weeks, life seems to make sense." In 2018, Perry's substance abuse problems became so dire that he was hospitalized and given a two per cent chance of survival after his colon burst from opioid overuse. He was put on life support — extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which does the work of the heart and lungs so they can rest — and his parents were prepared for the worst. "Five people had an ECMO machine that night and the other four died," he said. "And I survived." For Perry, writing the book was easy, but reading it brought him to the terrible realization that he's lived "the most torturous life." Despite that, he said sharing his story has been the best thing he could do to help others going through the same struggle with alcoholism and addiction. "Wonderful things happened in my life — I'm incredibly grateful for all of them," he said. "But that's the ticket for me, is helping people on a large news vietnam vanguard news vocm news vancouver news vaccine mandate news vatican news vikings news valley news live victoria news vicente fernandez news vaccine news news world news websites news west 9 news weather newsweek news who died today news war news world series news worldwide news wire world news www.chelsea news.com www.bbc news www.cnn news www.yahoo news www.msn news www.arsenal news.com www.chelsea transfer news www.arsenal transfer news www.abc news news xbox news x paper news xrp news xi jinping news xfinity outage news xbox console news x paper review news xi news xbox games xrp news xrp news today xrp news prediction xi jinping news

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