Actor Matthew Perry has experienced his fair share of hardships throughout his lengthy career in the entertainment industry. In recent years, Perry has been quite open about his long-standing struggles with addiction and how those negative experiences have impacted his life. The Web Therapy star even released a memoir called Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which examines Perry’s experience with addiction in great detail. As noted by Buzzfeed News, Perry recently sat down with CBC to reflect on his real-life battles, how they impacted his work on Friends, and why he hasn’t seen the sitcom series that shot him to fame.

Perry stated that he couldn’t rewatch his iconic portrayal of beloved funny man Chandler Bing because he could identify the substances he’d taken in each season. The Cougar Town actor said, “I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine. I could tell season by season by how I looked.” He stated, “That’s why I don’t wanna watch it, because that’s what I see.” The actor even went into detail about what he was taking and how it impacted him. “I was taking 55 Vicodin a day, I weighed 128 lbs, I was on Friends getting watched by 30 million people — and that’s why I can’t watch the show, ‘cause I was brutally thin.”

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Matthew Perry Didn’t Let Addiction Impact His Character on Friends

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Still, despite battling with the disease of addiction while shooting the series, Perry noted that he made sure that his real-life experiences didn’t have a negative impact on his Friends character. “I had a rule that I would never drink or do drugs while working. Because I had too much respect for the five people I was working with. So I was never wasted while working.” Even so, the 17 Again star did admit that he’d gone to the set “extremely hungover.” Perry said, “At one point I was shaking so much that if I was gonna go from the bookshelf to the table, I’d have to quickly do it and put my hand on the table so I wouldn’t shake. It got that bad.” He then declared, “But Chandler never changed, the writing never changed.” Perry added, “It was my ability to pull off this addiction that I didn’t understand.”

During another part of the chat, the actor became extremely emotional as he expressed how unfair his experiences with addiction felt when compared to his co-workers. “You know, the thing that always makes me cry — and I hope I don’t cry here — is that it’s not fair. It’s not, it’s not fair,” Perry said. “It’s not fair that I had to go through this disease while the other five didn’t. They got everything that I got, but I had to fight this thing — and still have to fight this thing.”

But despite the dark moments in his life’s journey, Perry is ready to move forward and even hopes to finally start rewatching Friends. “I think I’m gonna start to watch it, because it really has been an incredible thing to watch it touch the hearts of different generations,” he said. “It’s become this important, significant thing,” Perry declared. “It was really funny and all the people were nice. I’ve been too worried about this, and I wanna watch Friends too,” he admitted as the audience expressed their delight at Perry’s statement and applauded for the star.