MATTHEW PERRY SPENT $7M ON SOBRIETY, SISTER SAYS

Mia Perry Bowick has said her brother Matthew Perry spent $7million trying to get sober, in a trailer for a new three-part Netflix documentary examining his struggle with addiction. Perry, who played Chandler Bing in Friends, was found unresponsive in the pool at his residence on 28 October 2023 and pronounced dead at the age of 54. A cause of death was later attributed to the acute effects of ketamine. In the trailer, Perry Bowick said her brother spoke of "that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn't quite fill" and described the sum spent on his recovery as evidence of "how seriously he took his disease".

Perry wrote about the financial cost of his recovery in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he said he became addicted to the opiate painkiller Vicodin following a jet ski accident while filming Fools Rush In with Salma Hayek in 1996. He said he underwent 15 stints in rehab over three decades and spent more than $7million, equivalent to around £5.7million, in his attempts to achieve sobriety. In a separate interview the same year, Perry gave a higher figure, saying the cost was closer to $9million, or around £7.4million. He also established a sober living facility for men facing similar addiction issues.

The Netflix documentary, reported to be titled The One About Matthew Perry, features contributions from his family and close friends reflecting on his career and his private struggles. It covers his path to stardom in Friends alongside the addiction issues he battled for much of his adult life. Perry Bowick's comments form part of the promotional material released ahead of the documentary's release. No UK broadcast or streaming date beyond the Netflix release has been confirmed in the material released so far.