Matthew Perry shares his incredible story of survival and why fame wasn't the answer to his problems

um I want to congratulate Matthew off the top for having his first number one bestseller [Applause] and I just wanted to say what a warm welcome to a fellow Canadian very nice to be back here it's lovely to have you I've been looking forward to this and congratulations on the book I really enjoyed thank you very much how's the process been of just talking about it it's been you know what it's all about is helping people and I've heard already five stories of people that read the book and checked into treatment well I thought what

we could do is kind of start from the beginning um the uh have a drink should we just have a drink yeah why not yeah no yeah yeah good idea um the book is called friends and uh friends lovers and the big terrible thing and the big terrible thing is of course your struggles with addiction over the years that you talk about in this book um it's a it's a dark book it's a real book it's a very funny book but again um there's there's reality there and there's Darkness there and I want to start

kind of where all that began which is the first time you had a drink you write about yeah you were 14 in the backyard somewhere in Ontario right Ottawa you were with a couple of buddies what do you remember from that night uh well I mean I mean that was pretty heavy I was with uh my best friends of the Murray brothers and uh we decided we didn't know what we were doing you know and uh they got some beers and I got a bottle of wine called anwar's baby duck is the name of it

and I drank the entire bottle and lay in the ground and looked at the skies and just felt better than I ever had in my entire life and I thought to myself this is probably what normal people feel like all the time well who are normal people you no um you know peop people who just walk the face of the Earth people and I finally felt at home for the very first time as soon as I drank alcohol I just I just loved it and I had a much different reaction than the murders did and

I had a much different reaction than normal people have normal people have a drink and I feel a little you know woozy and then they you know go home and go to work I have a drink and for the first time in three weeks the life life seems to make sense and why would you not want to drink if that happened to you all the time you know so you realized in that moment that other people seem to be responding to booze this way and I'm responding in a different way yes but I didn't understand

it at all because I was 14 years old and I didn't I didn't know it was happening to me um I just knew I had some issue with this thing and it's a progressive disease so it gets worse and worse as you get older so I didn't you'd think I would have a drink the very next night but I didn't and then you know as I was like 18 19 20 then it really started to kick in I was drinking every night it was a secret I would drink with my pals I would race to

a liquor store at quarter to two so I could have alcohol at my house and drink more than I did with my friends and um it just became this roller coaster to ride that I didn't understand but even at the beginning Matthew you talk about how like even when you were a little baby there were you still had an experience with pills uh it's tough because I don't I'm going to tell you a story and I don't blame my parents at all for this and you'll see why but I was a colicky kid and I

used to cry all the time and I was constantly crying and my parents took me to a doctor and he was an older doctor and he wore a white coat and he said if your baby's crying just give him this and they said okay and it was phenobarbital which is a major barbiturate and a very addictive thing and I was 30 days old and they gave it to me for 30 days so from 30 to 60 and there's pictures of me looking like knocked out like my face was all squinched I was like and they

would laugh because you know Stone babies are fun I guess but I know that it affected my sleep for ever I don't really sleep that well and I'm pretty sure it's because of that but if I was a parent and it was 1970 and I was given this by a doctor and the baby stopped crying I would do it too but you know now it's like well you [ __ ] crazy and what do you what do you feel when you start disclosing that kind of thing in the book like that that like what occurred

to you when you heard that story about when you were a baby um it was an interesting thing writing the book was pretty easy writing the book it was like cleansing it was like a wonderful experience I just wrote all these terrible things I got them down on the page and um but reading it was almost impossible it was like I disassociated a little bit and I looked at this book which I had to read Because I had to do the audio the next day you had to do it out loud and I had to

do it out loud yeah um but I looked at the book and I was just like this guy has had like the most torturous life I can't believe it and then I realized it was mean that I was talking about and you know it was I I literally had to sleep in a different room I was working on a laptop and I I moved the laptop into my living room so I could sleep that night because it was so powerfully dark and for so long I didn't know what was going on I do now um

and that's why the best thing about me is I can [Music] um help people if they asked me to um yeah I can wonderful things happen in my life I'm incredibly grateful for all of them but that's the ticket for me is helping people on a large scale or helping you know one guy and seeing the light turn on and him understanding what is happening because that's the problem you don't know what's happening you can't share with anybody because something's wrong and they might make you stop which you don't want to do yeah you know

a friend of mine said you know if the if you're drinking and like the police came to your door and said if you drink tonight we're going to take you to jail yeah you'd start packing for jail because you have to you have to drink you can't not drink yeah you know and the other thing man is I didn't want this and I didn't I didn't want to have this problem you know no and it's so cunning baffling and Powerful alcoholism and addiction and you know a lot of people say because the reason this book

has done so well and been taken into the hearts of so many people is because everybody's starting to know or have Addiction in their life people have the brother or a sister or grandfather or a close friend who has Addiction in their life and they need to know from the addict's point of view in this case me how horrible it is and how they're not weak we're not weak I'm a pretty strong resilient guy but it has nothing to do with weakness it's a disease that we have and we don't know that we have it

and if somebody says just stop you know you want to punch him in the face because they don't know you know Nancy Reagan had this Nancy Nancy Reagan had this slogan that said just say no just say no yeah and you're like well idiot if I could just say no I wouldn't have to go to 9 000 AAA meetings I'd just be at home saying no all the time the um that I mean that comes up pretty early on in the book and it's an interesting thing to read the book as a Canadian because I

think that we get some context from it that perhaps American audiences wouldn't necessarily get like you very early on in the book talk about that your mom your mom worked for the Prime Minister that Mom worked for prime minister Trudeau and that you say that like he was the most charismatic man had stolen your mother from you in the daytime well she she was you know Alex and Jenny In The West Wing you know that's what my mother was for uh Pierre Trudeau and she was beginning to become a little bit of a celebrity herself

being seen with him a lot you know and I always have this image of this big Ballroom like this room like this this big ballroom and my mother walking in and taking all sort of the glory because she was beautiful and people just knew her and and I was like five feet behind her and all I wanted was for her to turn around and you know focus on me and like be with be with me you took me and it's I I want I want I want your company I want you to help help me

I'm a kid you know and uh she never really did that and what I realized as an older guy is that I've I still do that a little bit what do you mean it's the it's the it's and this is all part of addiction and all that stuff but I still want the unavailable the person who's not turning around I still like want that person to turn around and notice me and that forms as a guy who doesn't drink or do drugs that's some that's like a little bit of a drug for me when a

girl goes I don't want you oh no I do want you um you know it's a little bit of a drug for me because all I wanted was for her to turn around or mention me on the news yeah whatever yeah and she you know she didn't do anything wrong she didn't she was just doing a job but that's something that you know from a young age it hurt me and then there's this other Canadian I mean there's also the the Justin Trudeau part of the book where I really got a kick out of which

is that you grew up with the Prime Minister currently yeah anyway you may have beat him up yeah it's I don't know it's still unclear whether you beat him up or not the Murray brothers that I spoke about earlier remember those cuts yeah yeah I would like them to stand up are they here yeah Brian Chris come on you have to stand up stand up stand up for a second one more time one more time give him a round of applause okay so that's here's the deal with them those guys are my best friends since

third grade and they and I started talking in this kind of interesting way maybe you're familiar with it but we would say to each other could that could that teacher be any meaner could I have more of an attention and I took that way of speaking and made like a hundred million dollars off [Applause] these two very very nice guys they did not do that but they're nice about it you know I mean you expect somebody to be kind of mean about that but they're just great and I love you guys and um you know

the Murray Brothers also were there when I first drank so you know [ __ ] you [Laughter] potentially potentially beat up the Prime Minister that's their story is that is that I beat up uh prime minister truth and you know it's possible and uh it became a Twitter thing where he I said it on Twitter I guess and he responded yes and wouldn't you want to punch Chandler in the face and I think we should have another battle is what he said and I immediately wrote back you have your own Army you win good luck

in all your endeavors stop writing to me run your country so I'm not sure if it happened another Canadian who means a lot to you in more of like um and more of like a path that you sort of started to follow and something you started to Aspire to was was Michael J fox right he he he was not just in he was not just like an actor you liked but he sort of represented something you wanted to Aspire to yeah Michael J fox and I was young I'd done a couple of plays in school

and Michael J fox was it man at the when I was in ninth grade Michael J fox had just done Back to the Future and like there was smoke coming out of my ears I was so jealous of this guy right and he had at the time the number one TV show and the number one movie at the same time so he was huge and I don't know anybody else who's done that except me [Laughter] [Applause] you had you had that with the whole nine yards out and Friends of course and they were number one

at the same time so I thought that was pretty cool and maybe only Canadians get to do that yeah they choose one Canadian every 30 years that's right yeah the next one is being born right now yeah I wish I was there for that yeah me too um um so we'll we'll get to friends in in a second but before you get the role in friends you move to Los Angeles yeah uh you go to school you act in school and plays and next thing you know you have an aptitude for acting you start to

get this attention for being an actor you shoot a movie with River Phoenix you're shooting a sitcom with Valerie Bertinelli uh you're hanging out with this new kind of crew of of buddies yeah Hank Azaria is is one of them you know he is guy on Simpsons yeah yeah yeah and uh who are the other guys who are they uh David Pressman was a friend of mine I'll talk about him in a bit uh and Craig bierco yeah who uh was the funniest guy and I you know I thought that I was the funniest guy

and I was just like a little second behind Craig pierco and he was a little better looking than me and we all loved him but hated him because he would get all these jobs and stuff um do you want me to tell him that story now I was I mean whatever you tell whatever you want go ahead yeah I can speak freely oh yeah you know the prime minister is not here okay so you can do it everywhere that's fine I don't know you may know this story do you know the story about Craig bierko

some no you don't okay so the a pilot season in Los Angeles is a very important time for actors where they do all the new shows so you get hired to be in a new show and if they like it it gets on the air but you have to do a pilot first so my business manager called me and said you have no money and I said how about a little warning what what's going on and so I called my manager and I said I need money you got to give me a job right away

and the job that they got me was called LAX 2194 and it was about baggage handlers in the year 2194. did you hear the Applause someone tried to applaud yeah I've seen that yeah yeah and I wore a futuristic shirt and there were little people wearing wigs and they were the people in the futuristic people whatever it was awful but they paid they paid me the money that I needed to drink more and eat more and all that stuff so then a script called friends like us started to started to make its way around the

people and I saw a character in it that was me and we all know which character that was and uh I was like I am this guy I am Chandler you got to get me in to audition because I'll get it because he talks exactly like I do and they said we can't send you in you're attached to the baggage handler show and I kept trying kept trying and a couple of my friends said you're so much like this guy can I read this with you and can you show me how to do it and

I did show them how to do it and I was like don't don't hit that word hit that word and you'll get it and they got really close to getting the part based on that so I was I was just miserable I knew the show wasn't going to get picked up I'm reading friends like us it's so good it's character driven Courtney Cox is already in it it's like Jim Bros is directing it it's got all this stuff so Craig bierko calls Hank Azaria and I and says can you please come to meet me at

this restaurant at 10 o'clock in the morning I've just been offered two shows and I need your help to decide which and my first inkling was [ __ ] you I don't want to see your success and vote on it so so Hank and I both showed up he had two scripts in his hand friends like us and a show called best friends that was the other show both directed by Jim Burrows the best director in town and we read through both scripts and you know I wanted to but I'm not a jerk so I

said you know you have to do friends like us and so did Hank and then we went our separate ways and Hank went to the gym because he was always going to the gym and we Craig and I went to uh Trader Vic's which uh Fred Siegel which is a clothing store and this is back when people were using pay phones 1994 nobody had a phone so he picked up the pup the the phone the pay phone and called his agent with me two feet away from him and took the other show and I said

see ya and I raced home and I was like the part's still available they don't have anybody it starts Monday please please get me in I'll know I'll get it and uh somebody finally saw the baggage handler show and it was not going to get picked up mostly because it was about baggage handles so I was what's called a safe second which means their Show's not going to get picked up so we'll hire them for our show and my manager called me and said I got very good news for you you you're reading for Marta

Kaufman the executive producer of friends tomorrow morning and I was like oh my God I knew my life was going to change and I went in there on a Wednesday and I read for Marta Kaufman and David Crane and Kevin bright then on Thursday I read for the producers and then on Friday I read for the network which was the final thing there's like 45 people in the room and there were some other people reading for Chandler but I knew this was my job and I and I did it and I did it in my

way and I and I got it and then we started on Monday that's how fast it all was and I was the last actor hired in 1994. the final one and then we started on Monday and you know the rest is history [Applause] foreign how much of you when you say that character you said when I when I that character came up it was me it was already me but then you I mean as you referenced earlier you bring your style of speaking from you and your friends like what do you bring of yourself to

that character I mean it really was what Chandler was originally was supposed to be an obser a sarcastic Observer of everybody else's lives that's what it said in the breakdown so basically Chandler like had the final laugh line after a scene and all I brought to it was the way that the Murrays and I spoke that was the different way and I had done four shows before that and tried to do it and they were like talk like a normal person I think this might be funny you might want to try it and um you

know I brought to it you know there was a line like I don't somebody said something about genitalia being in somebody's house or something and the line was well I don't want that guy in my refrigerator near my refrigerator and I said well I don't want that guy near my refrigerator and they were like whoa what's that keep going why did you say that why'd you say it that way and uh so that was sort of where Chandler was born and then he had to wear a lot of sweater vests yeah there was a lot

of sweater vests a lot of ska fashion back then you know what I mean like you're like a bass player in a Ska band you know like big listen say something else I don't know what that is hold on bass player and skobin and have a pen it's the CBC we can't quite afford that um Trudeau so here's the thing um I tried to help you how did Chandler change as the person playing with him starts to struggle with addiction more and more during the he didn't change what was changing was me I had a

rule that I would never drink or do drugs while working because I had too much respect for the five people that I was working with so I was never wasted when I was working also it would totally turn off the timing and it would it would it would just be awful but I did work extremely hungover and you know at one point I was shaking so much that if I was going to cross if I was going to go from the bookshelf to the table I'd have to kind of quickly do it and put my

hand on the table so I wouldn't shake and you know it got it got that bad um but Chandler never changed the writing never changed it was my ability to pull off this addiction that I didn't understand um years later I was in a treatment center in a detox Ward and I was coming off of many many many drugs and I picked up the Alcoholics Anonymous book for the first time in my life and I read drinkers think they're drinking to escape but what they're really doing is trying to get over a disease they don't

know they have it's actually they say they're trying to get over a mental disorder they don't know they have and I went that's me I can't believe it this book was written in 1939 and it's about me it's about the guy who drove to the liquor store according to two so he could drink alone it's about all these habits about why my reaction was different than the Murrays when we drank that day when I was 14 we were all 14. um it separated me from the normal man so it was a great day on the

one hand but on the other hand it meant one day at a time I have to stop drinking forever and I thought well this is the only way I've ever enjoyed anything in the 20th century and I have to give it up or you know it's going to kill me so I I gave it up for a long period of time and we'll talk about this I'm sure but you know the insanity of having another drink a couple years later and starting this whole thing all over again was insane I was insane I am insane

but interestingly enough only in this area like I'm a pretty logical fellow in every area but this one yeah and I know logistically exactly what's going to happen and I still do it um and I couldn't understand that and just a brief lesson in alcoholism for you guys that don't know and addiction of course um it's a disease that's the first thing I didn't know in 1956 I think the American Medical Association said it was a disease and um it's a two-prong disease two things happen to me and 10 million other people in the United

States if it's an obsession of your mind so what that means is you think of a martini and then slowly but surely it's the only thing you can think about you can't think about anything else I got to get a martini I know I'm supposed to be over here working but I got to get another Martini out of the martini Martini martini and then once you take that Martini you break the um membrane of sobriety and once you do that the obsession the obsession is gone but the allergy of your body which is the second

part of the disease takes over and says oh now we're drinking I'm going to make you drink as much as you did last time and more it's Progressive so I'm gonna make you drink more than you did last time and you can't stop I could not stop unless I was locked away somewhere and at times I would call drug dealers and have drugs brought in to the place I was locked up in because I was desperate and begging for drugs because the only way I had to feel better and I did not I mean it

makes you forget too it's counting baffling and Powerful so that thing that I read in the book you know alcoholism you know didn't care about that and alcoholism did not care that I was on friends and alcohol just did not care about any of that [ __ ] they just alcoholism wants you alone it wants you sick and then it wants to kill you in the book I I say I compared to the Joker because the Joker just wants to see the whole world burn and so does alcoholism and addiction and it took over Decades

of my life and I pray to you if you worry that you're having this problem or you know somebody that is raise your hand find somebody who's smarter than you about this and talk to them and be honest about it because the secrets are what kill us as soon as I I mean he was pulled out of me by somebody the first time I admitted it but I was taking 55 bike in a day I weighed 128 pounds I was on Friends getting watched by 30 million people and that's why I can't watch the show

because I was like brutally thin and um being beaten down so badly by the disease so I went to Hazelden I went to my first rehab I didn't really learn anything I kind of just imitated Michael Keaton the whole time so I was like what do I have a problem with them alcohol um and I and I was placed in some kind of spiritual guys office and we talked a little bit and as we were done talking he turned around he I he turned me around and said just remember it's not your fault and I

went what he said it's not your fault and I would say that again it's not your fault and I said what do you mean it's not my fault I'm the one who's doing it what do you mean and he explained addiction and alcohol to me and he saved my life because I then knew that it wasn't my fault that it was that I wasn't weaker it wasn't my will that was screwed up it was that I have this disease and I need to get help and you know the thing that always makes me cry and

I hope I hope I don't cry here is that it's not there it's not it's not fair it's not fair it's not fair that I had to go through that I had to go through this disease while the other five didn't they got everything that I got but I I had to fight this thing and still have to fight this thing so just to end this on a good note there are people that will help you and get their help it doesn't go away it never goes away [Applause] I love you too I think I

think it helps us not to know each other you you all but you you also in the book talk about how you thought that so there's a scene in the book where you pray to God and I want to talk about the two times you pray to God in the book but I want to talk about the first time okay the first time you say something like like if you make me famous what is it so I was in my apartment and I read an article about uh somebody famous and he was in trouble for

doing something and I want I said to myself I was all alone I said to myself what does he care he's famous he doesn't care about this little thing he's famous the answer to everything is being famous and then for the first time in my life I knelt down and prayed and that prayer was please God make me famous you can do anything you want to me just make me famous three weeks later I got friends and God did not forget about the second one but what sticks out to me about that is that it

is just that there's a couple of moments in the book where you go I really thought that being famous I thought that having the number one TV show I I had everything I'd always wanted and it wasn't Matthew it wasn't able to fill the holes I think that was a that was a powerful realization for you yeah I mean I I had the American dream happened to me I got the great job I was good at it I had a I bought a house I the house had a pool and you know I was at

the American dream and I really really liked it loved it for about six months and then I walked in my house and went oh man this is not fixing this problem that I have how is that possible and I wanted to finish the Craig bierco story because it was really pivotal and it it was important um so Craig bierko after he didn't get friends and friends was on for two years and was a massive hit Craig didn't speak to me for those two years I would call him he wouldn't return my calls and he just

didn't want to be my friend anymore um so two years into it he called me up on the phone and said can we meet I'd like to talk with you I said of course yes great um so he came over to my apartment and he said I'm sorry that I have not called you in two years I could not handle that you got rich and famous on a show that I turned down we were both good enough to get that role and I said of course we were but let me tell you something pal it

doesn't do what we all thought it would do and we were 24 years old having that conversation and he didn't believe me nor would anybody believe me but it was true that's why I said to him I wanted to help him out I wanted to say you know it's not it doesn't solve the problem you know Jim Carrey did a really good quote a couple years ago a few few years ago and he said I want everybody to get their dream all their dreams come true everybody so that they could know that it's not the

answer and it's hard to that's one of the main reasons I bought that I wrote I didn't buy it I wrote it I I bought it you bought it yeah you know one of the main reasons I wrote the book was I wanted people to you know understand that and not many books have come from the side of the addict and you know told the story from that side before certainly not somebody who's been on one of their favorite shows or whatever and you know that message is very is very powerful because I I thought

it would fix everything and you know it didn't I still wanted to drink every day you you talk in the book about how you were one of the first if not the first celebrity to be open about going to rehab about going to rehab during friends about needing to get help during friends yeah that wasn't my choice though that was just that was just magazines and stuff taking pictures of me and finding out and I lost my anonymity that way and at the time I thought anonymity was pretty damn important but I was the first

kind of high level um celebrity to go into a rehab so they were very interested in that I was on the cover of everything and it was it just made everything harder on the other end it made things easier because I couldn't exactly go to a bar and go can I put Martini please as I was on the covers of everything what is it what does that do to you I spent a lot of time in the past little while talking about how Fame can be dehumanizing how that when you become a famous person some

of your humanity is robbed from you most people in this audience in fact I'd say everybody in this audience if they had a problem they would be able to get help for that problem without having cameras in their face and without having people [ __ ] screaming at them asking them questions about are you still drinking or you know all this stuff while you're walking down the street what is that what does that do to you what does that do to you when you're already struggling with this and you have this other layer to it

a really quick answer to that it's fine when you're doing fine and when you're not doing fine it's one of the most awful things in the world because you have to lie and pretend that you're doing well and you don't even understand why you have to do that but the key thing is that the reality of I'm going to be famous and it's going to make me happy you know is wrong it does do some great things what you want is an on off button that's what you want you want to be able to turn

it off when you want to and turn it on when you do and fellas I will tell you that if you do get to play Chandler on TV the women start to walk up to you hold on let me just uh let me just write that yeah that's okay hold on play Chandler on okay I used to think you've spent half my night trying to think of the line what would the line be to go to the girl and then I was like oh the girl's right here hi it's it's lovely to hear you talk

about the show because in in the book you talk about how in the past you had a complicated relationship with looking back on friends in the book you liken it to the way that Nirvana never played Smells Like Teen Spirit or that Led Zeppelin didn't like playing Stairway to Heaven you know they had a hit song and they didn't like to play it on stage is is are these two processes related like the coming to peace with that and talking to us so openly by the time on the show and uh yeah I'm in a

little bit but 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 and I don't think anybody else can but I certainly could and that's why I don't want to watch it because that's what I that's what I see that's what I noticed when I watch it but I'm I I think I'm gonna start to watch it because it it really has been an incredible first of all it was an incredible ride but it's been an incredible

thing to watch it touch the hearts of different generations and like all these like [Applause] it's become this important significant thing and you know I would I I think I would watch that again it was really funny and all the people were nice and I've been too worried about this and I would you know I want to watch friends too it it um you you start the book friends lovers in the big terrible thing and the first thing you do is declare I should be dead and then a few pages later you ask yourself the

question why am I alive yeah I'm curious if writing the Memoir helped you answer that question yeah definitely um the reason that book's any good is I was just setting out to help people um they say I've heard that if you're having anxiety you have depression one of the ways out of that is doing something creative so I said okay and I started writing on my notes app in my phone two thumbs and economical that's the way to do it eventually but I'm faster that way than this so I wrote about 140 pages that way

over the next like 10 12 days touching on all these subjects and then sent it out to my agent and manager and they said this is very good but it needs to be 150 more pages so I got depressed and thought Oh I thought I was done and then I switched over to my iPad and I started really filling this out and making it you know but my goal was always when I wanted to stop I was like God this is too much it's too much stop um I always went to no fat no matter

how far down the scale I've gone I'll be able to help somebody who's gone down that far too so I kept going and that's the only reason I kept going what what does helping other people give you in your own Journey then it is I can't describe it it's something spiritual it fills your heart you see the lights coming on for a new person who didn't understand that guy didn't have the guy who said it's not your fault I said that to him and then I saw this look of you know this look of relief

that it wasn't his fault and we started talking in a completely different way um and I get as much help from talking to 600 people as I do to one person it gives me the juice the same amount um and I think when I lay in this hospital bed for five months I had to figure out well first of all I was putting on an echo machine an ECMO machine does all your breathing and does all your heart work it's a machine that does that and it's what doctors and people call the Hail Mary it

never works people put this on this machine and they die but it you know it's it works occasionally and five people had an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived and my parents were told that I had a two percent chance of making it through the night so I'll have to live the rest of my life knowing that my parents heard those words and when something like that happens you'd think you'd be filled with gratitude yeah right yeah I'm so lucky to be alive that's not what it is you don't

feel that way you feel pissed you feel pissed off you know it's why did this happen to me and like God and like I vomited into my respirator and you talk to anybody in the medical profession and go that guy's dead there's no way that that guy with that combination of things survived and as I started to get better and I started to get better like you know we were told by doctors that I was so messed up down there that they couldn't even operate for another year and a half until everything was okay enough

to go back in and so I had to live my life that way and with really unfortunate things happening and and you know I never thought I'd get to sit up here I never thought I'd it's crazy that I wrote a number one bestseller you know I mean it's pretty cool that's pretty good man pretty good you said in the book I think you have to have all your dreams come true to realize they're the wrong dreams what what are they that's the product stole from Jim Carrey I guess what are the what are the

dreams now the dreams now the best thing about me Bar None is if somebody comes up to me and says I can't stop drinking can you help me I can say yes and follow up and do it that's the best thing and I've said this for a long time when I die I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned I want that to be the first thing to mention and I'm going to live the rest of my life proving that do you want to do some wanna do some audience questions yeah you

guys ask some questions let's answer questions I'm done I'm off the clock well we start with this one okay all right do you have any favorite spots to visit in Toronto uh going to Leaf games sorry sorry for the Leafs yeah they're well yeah yeah Habs fan you know well you've you've had your time [Music] if your book had a soundtrack what would it be don't give up which is a Peter Gabriel listen to this song when you get home Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush and it's just beautiful I don't know if you've heard it

this is a long time ago but it's beautiful and the you know it's saying don't give up I mean it's yeah come on I mean how am I not gonna like that but the video music video of that was just them hugging each other and the camera just went around until the song was over and it was so cool and I love that I've been writing like when I signed the book I always put don't give up there because you shouldn't give up you should I don't know that's a less that's a less good inscription

yeah you should give up yeah um Matthew you actually should give up Matthew Perry okay I waited maybe give up uh it's very wrinkles uh Daria asks Daria okay asks what advice do you have for people who are trying to become sober IA where are you Darian hi Daria just wanted you to get a little Applause um well we've touched on this which is uh don't keep it a secret uh you know raise your hand and say you're suffering you you are drinking and you can't stop and then it's like the disease goes well if

you're going to tell somebody about it don't go away for a while and that's the way it works but the Jesus disease always comes back but that's my advice have it stop be a secret raise your hand ask for help and when you start going to AAA meetings don't leave an AAA meeting until you know which one is next that's that's my big hint in a Amanda asks did you learn anything new about yourself through the process of writing this book yeah I learned how how close I came to death and how often that happened

and how I just never want to do it again Tiffany asks how would you like to be remembered I would like to be remembered as somebody who lived well loved well um was a Seeker and is Paramount thing is that he wants to help people that's that's what I want but I think I'm saying that too much but it's true well but I think that I think that's a good a good way to wrap things up because I guess what I wanted to say at the end was that you have already helped us so much

I read a lot of books I have yet to see one as honest and truly vulnerable as this one and I I know it's also your way of helping us again so thank you so much for it thank you Perry everybody [Applause] all right