♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, matthew perry. the friend we love riding a wave of stardom fueled by the wildly popular landmark television series "friends." behind the scenes hiding a life-threatening secret. with nothing but drug dealers. - >> his brushes with death. >> i was in that hospital for five months. and you know, escaped death really narrowly. >> a look back at his conversation with diane sawyer and what he hoped telling his story would do for others. >> i've got to help as many people as i can. model for change.

kwanta chasing horse. >> i didn't fit beauty standards. >> raising awareness about the climate crisis. >> i don't represent just kwanta chasing horse. i represent all of native america. ur moment of calm find your potential then own it support your immune system with a potent blend of nutrients and emerge your best every day with emergen-c [sleep app ] close your eyes. deep breath in. i mean, obviously, let it out. ghaa. yeah, i'm not really sure if this is working either.

good evening. thank you for joining us. a raw and emotional conversation with matthew perry. when he first spoke with diane sawyer earlier this year, sharing herewith struggles with addiction and how it nearly killed him, he did so as part of a mission to help others. perry says he spent half his 53 years in treatment or in sober living houses. it's all part of his heroin road to sobriety. >> reporter: home in los angeles. the door opens. >> mom? oh! it's diane sawyer! >> oh, that matthew perry. really wonderful to see you. >> please come in. >> reporter: 53 years old. we remember when we first saw him. effortlessly so fast. an original. now it seems impossible 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 secret from everyone. >> secrets kill people like me. >> reporter: now those secret on this the pages of a book 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 alone. but together, one day at a time, we can beat it down." >> yeah. your disease is outside, doing

one-arm push-ups, 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. 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 of your life in treatment or in sober living houses. >> reporter: 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 ecmo machine. an ecmo machine, when you talk to any doctor, 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 ecmo machines, 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, escapes 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. and 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 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 -- 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 wa never do that. but i would show up blindly hung over. like, shaking, crazy hung over. >> reporter: still, somehow brilliant on camera. maybe because he's an athlete and young and cares so much. >> well, i loved chandler. i love the show. 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 is? they had met years earlier. perry asked her out, she said, no, let's be friends. >> you had one of your serial crushes, if i may say. >> yeah, i may have to --

>> you really kind of chain-crushed. >> i did. i have a crush on jenny and courtney 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 the number one sitcom on tv. >> it's the time i should have ben 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 taken something like that 12 a day, 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? >> well, 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. a bunch of doctors, fake

migraines, all that stuff. i guess the weirdest thing i did was on sundays, i would go to open houses and go to the bathrooms in the open house. see what pills they had in there and steal them. and i think they thought, "well, there's no way chandler came in and stole from us." used to reduce the risk of hiv without daily prep pills. with one shot every other month, just 6 times a year. in studies, apretude was proven superior to a daily prep pill in reducing the risk of hiv. you must be hiv negative to receive apretude and get tested before each injection. if you think you were exposed to hiv or have flu-like symptoms, tell your doctor right away. apretude does not prevent other sexually transmitted infections. practice safer sex to reduce your risk. don't take apretude if you're allergic to or

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during covid, we were all rewatching "friends." 97 billion minutes of it watched in 2020 alone.

>> i'm not great at the advice. can i interest you in a sarcastic comment? >> reporter: as we laughed, 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 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 taking 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 hard. it's hard to watch that. >> reporter: at one point along this path, his friends reach out. >> jenny, yeah. >> and she says, we know you're drinking. >> yeah. imagine how scary a moment that was. pand i said, how, i thought i ws hiding it so well? she said, we can smell it, we can smell it. 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: "friends" is

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. >> looked pretty good. i'd watch that scene over and over, that was good. i looked good. sober. 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'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 about it. i know the book is going to help people. >> reporter: 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." and part two, the other thing, is if i ever say i'm cured. >> our thanks to diane. up next, model for change. how quannah chasinghorse is forging a new path in the fashion industry and as a land protector. announcer: type 2 diabetes? discover the power of 3 in the ozempic® tri-zone. in my ozempic® tri-zone, i lowered my a1c, cv risk, and lost some weight. announcer: ozempic® provides

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♪ we end tonight celebrating national native american heritage day. quannah chasinghorse is changing trying to change the world.lso - here is abc's janai norman. >> reporter: from the runways of new york and paris to the pages of "vogue."

quannah chasinghorse is changing the face of fashion. >> i always wanted to be a model. but i never thought that that was going to be in my path. i never saw myself represented. and i didn't fit the beauty standards. >> reporter: the 20-year-old premiering a documentary called "walking two worlds" at the tribeca film festival, a long way from the remote village in rural alaska she calls home. >> having a relationship with the earth i think is the foundation of how i walk my path. >> reporter: chasinghorse's native american heritage informs her mission as a land protector, first and foremost. >> we have been dealing with a lot of environmental issues long before it has become a trend to talk about. because our ways of life, our existence, has been at stake for so many years. >> reporter: now she's using her

platform, working with france, to become more sustain an. sustainable. as a beacon for other native youth -- >> i don't represent just quannah chasinghorse. i represent all of native america. i want to be able to share who we are in the best way that i can. >> our thanks to janai. you can learn much more about quannah's story along with other native americans fighting for indigenous sovereignty in our documentary "our america: reclaiming turtle island" now streaming on hulu. that's it for "nightline" this evening. have a good and safe weekend. we leave you with a look at our new show "impact by "nightline"" also available on hulu. >> kanye west is complicated. >> is ye an anti-semite? >> you're a fan of lil wayne,

introduced to you at different stages, right? >> who was lil wayne in 2022? >> i was 26 when i needed an abortion. it saved my life. it was the best decision i ever >> people are like, look at this, they've been finding bodies in the lake, maybe one will be your dad. >> nobody crawls into a barrel and shoots themselves in the head. that's a mob hit. >> we've been investigating a farm where we've been told children are working in the fields. >> david, i've got to tell you we're in a little bit of danger here.