Matthew Perry had a constant girlfriend in Jennifer Aniston.
Last year, the actor – who died on Saturday aged 54 – opened up about how his Friends Costar, 54, has stayed in close contact with him through the ups and downs of his battle with addiction and sobriety.
“She was the one who reached out the most. You know, I’m really grateful for that,” Perry said of Aniston in an October 2022 interview with Diane Sawyer.
Perry also revealed that Aniston initially confronted him while filming the hit sitcom when his addiction became apparent to his co-stars.
“Jennifer, she says, ‘We know you drink,'” Sawyer prompted in the interview.
“Yeah, imagine what a scary moment that was,” Perry replied.
“I was supposed to be the capital, but I was in a dark room meeting only drug dealers and I was completely alone,” he later added, adding that he was caught up in addiction at the height of his TV career.
Matthew Perry opens up about his addiction journey with new memoir: ‘I’m grateful to be alive’
Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry in 1995. Ron Davis/Getty
In an interview with PEOPLE in 2022, Perry recounted a dark time during his Friends reign when he was taking as many as 55 Vicodin pills a day and his weight dropped to just 128 pounds.
“I didn’t know how to stop,” he explained. “If the police came to my house and said, ‘If you drink tonight, we’re going to take you to jail,’ I’d start packing. I couldn’t stop because the disease and addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you get older.”
Although Perry said he tried to hide the signs of his spiraling addiction from Aniston and the rest of his co-stars, they all knew he was struggling — and did their best to support him.
“[They] they were understanding and patient,” he recalled. “It’s like a penguin. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick or badly injured, other penguins surround and support him. They walk around until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s something the cast did for me.”
Perry told PEOPLE that he thinks he can rely on his trademark humor — and the coveted appearance on the show — to keep him going.
“I thought if I was funny the whole time I’d pass,” he said. “I meant [Friends] intended to fix everything. It’s not.”
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When Perry was finally able to get sober, he talked about how grateful he felt to be on the other side of his addiction. “I’m an extremely grateful guy. I’m grateful to be alive, that’s for sure. And it gives me the ability to do anything,” he said.
Looking back, Perry said the dark times he lived through — including nearly dying at age 49 after his colon ruptured from an opioid overdose — made him stronger “in every way.”
“What I’m most surprised about is my resilience. The way I can bounce back from all these tortures and atrocities,” he told PEOPLE.
Remembering the life and career of Matthew Perry in photographs
He decided to share his deeply personal story in his memoirs Friends, lovers and the big scary thing so that he could be the straw of salvation for others as Aniston was for him.
“I think they’ll be surprised at how bad it was at certain times and how close I was to death,” he said of the rawness of the experiences he wrote about.
“I say in the book that if I die, it would shock people, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone. And that’s a very scary thing to live with,” he continued. “So I hope people will understand that and know that this disease affects everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not, the disease doesn’t care.”
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Source: HIS Education