♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, hammer attack. house speaker nancy pelosi's husband, paul, severely beaten. >> the suspect pulled a hammer away from mr. pelosi and violently assaulted him with it. >> inside their san francisco home. the suspect allegedly looking for the speaker shouting "where's nancy?" what police saw during the attack. plus the matthew perry exclusive. the friend we loved. riding a wave of stardom fueled by the wildly popular landmark television series "friends." behind the scenes hiding a life-threatening secret. >> i was in a dark room meeting with nothing but drug dealers.

>> his multiple brushes with death. >> i was in that hospital for five months. and, you know, escaped death really narrowly. >> why he's sharing his story now. >> i've got to help as many people as i can. these are the faces of listerine. the face of millions of germs zapped in seconds. the face of clean. the face of whoa. some are of intensity, others, joy. all are of - ahhhh. listerine. feel the whoa! becoming a morning person starts the night before with new neuriva relax and sleep. it has l-theanine to help me relax from daily stress. plus, shoden ashwagandha for quality sleep. so i can wake up refreshed. neuriva: think bigger.

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thanks for joining us. house speaker nancy pelosi's 82-year-old husband is recovering after a vicious beating by an intruder armed with a hammer. paul pelosi was rushed into surgery for a skull fracture. police saying tonight the attacker said "where's nancy?" and the actions of the 911 operator they say were life-saving. here's abc's mola lenghi. >> reporter: the brutal attack inside speaker of the house nancy pelosi's home. her husband, paul pelosi, beaten with a hammer in the middle of the night. police and the fbi believe speaker pelosi was the intended target. a man identified by police as 42-year-old david depape breaking into the pelosis' san francisco home. sources telling abc news the suspect entered through a glass door shouting "where's nancy, where's nancy?" police arriving on scene around 2:30 a.m., moments before the violent attack, witnessing it firsthand. >> they observed mr. pelosi and

mr. depape each with one hand on a single hammer. officers, while still outside of the doorway threshold, gave commands to both men to drop the hammer. mr. depape pulled the hammer away from mr. pelosi and violently attacked him. >> reporter: both taken to the hospital. the speaker's office saying he is expected to make a full recovery. the alleged attacker facing charges including attempted homicide, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon. the suspect's online social media pages show multiple conspiracy theories related to 2020 election and the january 6th capitol riot. authorities still trying to determine motive. the white house saying the president and nancy pelosi spoke over the phone and the president is praying for paul pelosind speaker pellow sister' whole family. lawmakers from both parties immediately condemning the

attack. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell tweeting he is horrified and disgusted and grateful to hear paul is on track to make avery. the suspect's alleged call for pelosi chillingly similar to the chants during the january 6th attack on the capitol. >> nancy! [ bleep ] oh nancy! >> bring her out here! we're coming in if you don't bring her out! >> reporter: two months ago, a rioter who carried a gun into the capitol and threatened speaker pelosi was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. several men had been convicted in recent years of threatening the speaker, and the pelosi home was vandalized last year. 11 days until midterm elections, the attack as threats of violence against lawmakers is at an all-time high. >> our thanks to mola. we turn to an emotional and raw conversation with matthew perry, sharing his struggles with addiction and how it nearly killed him. it's the exclusive interview

with diane sawyer. perry says he spent half his 53 years in treatment or in sober living houses. it's all part of his harrowing road to sobriety. >> reporter: a home in los angeles. the door opens. >> mom? oh, it's diane sawyer. >> oh, that matthew perry. really wonderful to see you. >> good to see you, please come in. >> reporter: matthew perry is 53 years old. but he knows most of us will always remember when we first saw him. >> okay, who wants light cheese, who wants dark cheese? >> reporter: chandler, played by an actor who was effortlessly so fast, an original. and now it seems impossible that all those years ago when we were laughing, we never knew that the young star was fighting for his life in a riptide of addiction. it was pulling him to hell and back over and over again, and he was trying to keep it a secret from everyone. >> secrets kill you. secrets kill people like me.

>> reporter: now matthew perry has put those secrets on the pages of a book. it is dedicated to other sufferers who, like him, might need help. >> it was important to me to do something that would help people. >> friends, lovers, and the big terrible thing. you start with a thunderclap, first page. "hi, my name is matthew, although you may know me by another name. my friends call me mattie, and i should be dead." >> yeah. that's definitely true. >> you say, "addiction, the big terrible thing, is far too powerful for anyone to defeat palone. but together, one day at a time, we can beat it down." >> yeah. your disease is just outside, just doing one-arm push-ups, waiting. waiting for you. waiting to get you alone. because alone, you lose to the disease. and now i finally feel okay and feel like i've got some strength. >> what does it mean to feel okay?

>> it means that i've developed some safety nets around this. you know, for some reason, it's obviously because i was on "friends," more people will listen to me. so i've got to take advantage of that, i've got to help as many people as i can. >> reporter: we've all learned it's not ours to ask someone in recovery how long they've been sober. he says it's why he's written the harrowing details of his journey through alcohol, all those drugs, and the fight to break free. 6,000 aa meetings, therapy 30 years, 15 rehabs. >> yeah. >> maybe, at least. half your life in treatment or in sober living houses. he has been in detox, he estimates, 65 times. survived 14 surgeries after a nearly fatal emergency four years ago. >> they ran me into the

emergency trauma room. and it was in there that my colon exploded. i was put on an ekmo machine. when you talk to any doctor, a ekmo machine is a hail mary, it is the last thing that you do before people die. and there were five people that night that were put on ekmo machine, and i was the only one who survived. >> reporter: he was in a coma for 14 days. as he heals from all he's been through, there's still wear and tear on his voice and speech, and the scars on his body like a warrior back from battle. >> i was in that hospital for five months. and, you know, escaped death really narrowly. >> reporter: perry says he's proof that addiction can enter any home, any heart. he's 14 with his canadian pals and a common teenage rite of passage. >> i'd never drank before. i was just sort of -- drank this

entire bottle of what was called anwar's baby duck. that was the name of the wine. and i lay in the grass and just was in -- was in heaven. and i thought to myself, this must be the way that normal people feel all the time. and i thought that at 14. >> reporter: his friends could drink and stop. but for him, the relief was so easy, it became his destination. >> but, you know, by the time i was 18, i was drinking every day. >> reporter: it's a pattern he continues even after landing a starring role in a show that was then called "friends like us." but you had no trouble with the lines, you had no trouble with the timing, you had no trouble showing up every day? >> early on, yes. and i made a rule that i would never drink or take anything at work. so i would never do that.

but i would show up blindly hung over, like shaking and crazy hung over. >> reporter: but still somehow brilliant on camera. maybe because he's an athlete and young and cares so much. >> well, i loved chandler. i loved the show. and i also knew -- remember this, because it's going to be the best time of your life. and i knew it. >> reporter: lisa kudrow says matthew perry was always the one trying to keep everyone else happy. >> lisa is the funniest, maybe the funniest person i've ever worked with. >> reporter: and jennifer aniston? they had met years earlier. perry asked her out on a date, she said no, let's be friends. you had one of your serial crushes, if i may say. >> yeah. >> you really kind of chain-crushed? >> i did. obviously i have a crush on jenny and courtny and lisa. it made it kind of difficult to go to work because i had to

pretend that i didn't have these. >> reporter: it is the year 2000. he's the star of the number one sitcom on tv. >> it's the time i should have been the toast of the town. i was in a dark room, meeting with nothing but drug dealers, and completely alone. for months. >> reporter: the spiral into prescription drugs has begun. he has a memory of the first pill as indelible as the first teenage drink long ago. he was making a movie called "fools rush in." during a lunch break, he was playing around on a jet ski. has an injury. he's given a pill for the pain and says it was like warm honey entering his veins. >> i swear to god, i think if i'd never taken it, none of the next three decades would have gone the way they did. who knows? when i woke up, 40 more pills had been delivered to my house.

>> reporter: they were vicodin. he tells himself, maybe he can curb his drinking if he uses pills to tame his fear and self-doubt. more pills of many kinds that take over with a vengeance. >> i'd been taking something like 12 a day. and then went cold turkey one day and felt absolutely terrible. >> reporter: his body has built up such a tolerance, he takes more pills to stave off withdrawal. and then, horrifyingly more. >> 55 vicodin a day, which is where i was. >> 55? >> yeah. >> how did you get 55 a day? >> i had to wake up and realize i needed to get 55 of them or i was going to be really sick. so i did all sorts of things. i had a bunch of doctors, faked migraine, all that stuff. the weirdest thing i did is sundays i would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms

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i see it in my office all the time. kids getting hooked on flavored tobacco, including e-cigarettes. big tobacco lures them in with flavors like lemon drop and bubble gum, candy flavors that get them addicted to tobacco products, and can lead to serious health consequences, even harming their brain development. that's why pediatricians urge you to vote yes on prop 31.

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there was something we were seeing on that screen we never fully recognized. matthew perry clearly changing season to season, signaling something is wrong. he writes this in the book. >> 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. >> reporter: he writes about the scenes that remind him how he was just barely holding on. he needed the pills to function, but the pills destroy appetite and cause deep nausea. i ask him if it was okay for us to look at one of those scenes together. >> sure. >> reporter: a scene in which he is painfully thin, shirt hanging off his body. >> wait a minute, i know that hat. i was taken aboard that hat. they did experiments on me. i can't have children! >> yeah, of course. it's very hard to watch that.

because in this weird way, i feel so sorry for that guy. because that's a guy that's out of control. i didn't know what was going on with me. i weighed 155 pounds, on my way to 128 pounds. i feel too sorry for that guy. he's going through too much. and it's me. and i remember that. and i didn't understand what was going on. but again, i'm sorry, i'm so grateful to not be that anymore. but it's -- it's hard.

it's hard to watch that. >> reporter: at one point along this path, his friends reach out. >> jenny, yeah. >> she says, we know you're drinking? >> yeah. imagine what a scary moment that was. and i said, how? i thought i was hiding it so well. she said, we can smell it. we can smell it. and -- but i wasn't in a position to stop. you know? and that's what addiction is. but she was the one that reached out the most, you know. i'm really grateful to her for that. in nature, when a penguin is injured, the other penguins group around it and prop it up until it's better. this is what my costars on "friends" did for me. >> reporter: back at the series "friends" heading toward its final years, he's committed to rehab for three months. he's been driven from rehab every morning to the set of

"friends" and experiences life as it might have been. can we watch the scene? >> i love you. any surprises that come our way, it's okay, because i will always love you. you are the person i was meant to spend the rest of my life with. you want to know if i'm sure? >> you may now kiss the bride. [ laughter ] >> looked very good. i'll watch that scene over and over, that was good. i looked good. sober. i just -- well, that's fun to watch, thank you. >> reporter: he's written about the harrowing details of his journey and his hard-earned sober life. >> for a start, i've surrendered. but to the winning side, not the losing. i'm no longer mired in an

impossible battle with drugs and alcohol. and helping others had become the answer for me. >> when someone calls you for help and says, i'm in trouble, what do you want to say to them first? >> i say, come over. let's talk. >> reporter: the interview is winding down. the work of his new life just gearing up. >> this isn't fun, you know? you're very nice, and being interviewed by you is great. but it's not fun to talk about this stuff. i don't like talking about it. but -- i know it's going to help people to talk aout it. i know the book is going to help people. >> reporter: and before we leave, there's a question he saw me ask once before of someone else in recovery. he thinks it's interesting, so i ask him too. how will we know when you're in trouble, when you're not okay? >> if i say "i'm just going to chill alone at home tonight."

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♪ that's "nightline" on this friday night. matthew perry will be live on "gma" monday. you can stream diane's full interview on hulu. we'll see you right back here monday. thankses for staying up with us. good night, america. have a great weekend.