Former "Friends" star Matthew Perry (53) struggled with his alcohol and pill addiction for many years. "I probably spent nine million dollars or so getting sober," he told the New York Times shortly before the release of his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. According to the newspaper, he has now been clean for 18 months.

His "Friends" colleagues would also have supported him in the fight against his addiction, especially Jennifer Aniston (53). In an interview with US journalist Diane Sawyer, Perry revealed that she confronted him about his alcohol addiction. Aniston approached him one day on the set of the cult series, which ran from 1994 to 2004, and revealed that she and the rest of the cast knew "that you drink," Perry recalled. "Imagine how scary that moment was". Aniston was the one who gave him a helping hand most often. He was "very grateful" to her.

In his book Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, out November 1, Perry is more open than ever about his serious addiction problems. According to a report by the US magazine "People", his memoir begins with the fact that he almost died at the age of 49.

After taking too many painkillers, his intestines burst. Perry was in a coma for two weeks and spent a total of five months in the hospital. When he got to the hospital, "the doctors told my family I had a two percent chance of surviving. He was hooked up to what's called an ECMO machine," which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs. [...] Nobody survives that."

Perry now wants to help other people with his book. Four other people hooked up to an ECMO machine that same night died and only he survived. "So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some reason for that."

In February, Perry first announced the title of his memoir. "So much has been written about me in the past. I thought it was about time people heard from me," Perry wrote on Instagram at the time. "The highs were high, the lows were low. But I survived to tell the story, even if at times it seemed like I wouldn't make it."