Perry was always candid about his drug abuse and excessive drinking, and his November 2022 interview with “Q with Tom Power” was no exception. Explaining why he refrained from revisiting “Friends,” Perry said, “I didn’t watch the show and haven’t watched the show because I could go drinking … opiates … drinking … cocaine. Like I could tell season by season by how I looked.” I can only imagine it’s like looking at an old photo of yourself that reminds you of all the problems you were dealing with when it was taken, only multiplied by 10. “And I don’t think anybody else can, but I certainly could,” Perry added. “And that’s why I don’t want to watch it because that’s what I see, that’s what I noticed when I watch it.”
In his memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing” (via People), Perry noted that you can also tell what substances he was abusing on any given season of “Friends” based on his appearance:
“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills. By the end of season three, I was spending most of my time figuring out how to get 55 Vicodin a day — I had to have 55 every day, otherwise I’d get so sick.”