Not many know that Perry has had 14 surgeries, detoxed over 65 times, gone to therapy twice a week for 30 years, been to rehab 15 times and attended 6000 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Further, he has lived half his life in treatment centres and sober living houses. Though he seemingly had everything on the outside, he was filled with a lurking loneliness from within – “a yearning, clinging to the notion that something outside of me will fix me,” he explains. To fight the fear of being alone, he turned to drugs and alcohol. He also confesses that sleep has always been a big issue for him, and he has never slept for longer than four hours straight in his life.

The book begins with Perry’s seventh day of excruciating “pain” while at a sober living house in Southern California. At that point, he was screaming and fighting for survival. After that, he went into coma, and his colon exploded. For this, he had to have a seven-hour surgery, and had a two percent chance of making it through the night. He was put onto an ECMO machine, and thereafter out in a heart and lung ICU unit for six weeks. After five months, he was finally released. It was something of a miracle that he came out of all of this alive. At one point, he even had a near-death experience, where he felt God’s presence. “The words of gratitude pour out of me because I should be dead, and yet somehow I am not,” he muses.

His lifelong feeling of abandonment stemmed from his early childhood years when his parents split up. With his father gone, Perry felt it was his role to perform, entertain, cajole, delight and make people laugh – “to soothe, to please, to be the Fool to the entire court.” His mother, a beautiful young woman who was only 21 at the time, soon became the press secretary for Pierre Trudeau, the then Canadian Prime Minister. Perry would end up spending a lot of time alone, as she would be away at work. Talking about his romantic trysts, Perry says that he has spent his life being attracted to unavailable women – a trait that he attributes to his complex relationship with his mother. His father – a small-time actor in Hollywood who appeared in an Old Spice advertisement – still remained his superhero. His parents later remarried other people, and went on to have children and families of their own. According to Perry, these reasons contributed towards him being “screwed up” when it came to matters of the heart.

At the age of five, he was sent as an unaccompanied minor on a plane from Montreal, Canada, were he lived with his mother, to Los Angeles, California, to visit his father. Though he had mostly bad grades in school, he acted lead roles in various plays and even became a nationally-ranked tennis player. He had also begun smoking while in school, and had his first drink at the age of 14 – an experience that comforted him, making him feel happy and completely at peace. Around this time, he left his mother and started living with his father in LA. It didn’t help that Perry’s father was also a heavy drinker – in fact, he was the one who taught him how to drink. By the age of 21, alcohol became his best friend. He would often drink alone in secret and began feeling uncomfortable without a drink.

Thankfully, acting was another of Perry’s drugs – one that didn’t do any damage. When he was 17, he got a role in a film followed by a few other bigger roles. At that point, all he wanted and cared about was fame. “You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer,” he says looking back. He figured that being famous would fill the great hole that endlessly grew inside him. “Magic never lasts; whatever holes you’re filling seem to keep opening back up,” he adds.

In 1994, when he read the role of Chandler Bing in the show which was then titled Friends Like Us, 24-year-old Perry felt it was tailor-made for him. Of course, he nailed the audition. The six actors on the show became inseparable, hanging out together, joking, eating together, playing poker, discussing their lives, loves, careers, romance, and losses. Perry’s way of speaking filtered into the culture across the next few decades. The following year, he began dating Julia Roberts. His first major movie Fools Rush In opposite Salma Hayek happened next. This was followed by Almost Heroes and The Whole Nine Yards. Despite being mostly a comedy actor, he has been nominated for three Emmys in drama and only one in comedy so far.

“The idea of being famous, the idea of being rich, the idea of being me – I can’t enjoy any of it unless I’m high. And I can’t think of love without wanting to be high,” he writes. At 26, Perry made his way to rehab for the first time. Four years later, he had pancreatitis. He was fed fluids through an IV at the hospital for a month. He spent another month in a detox centre in Marina del Ray. From there, he went to a Malibu rehab for three months. His then girlfriend, Jamie Tarse, had really helped him through this time – being almost like a nurse to him. However, after coming out of rehab, Perry promptly broke up with her. Later, he began working to help other alcoholics get sober – sponsoring people, answering calls, imparting advice. Helping others in this way soon became his calling.

Reading his eye-opening memoir, the reader learns that Perry’s is indeed “a life riddled with mistakes.” He admits that his addiction was his best and evil friend, his punisher and his lover, all rolled into one – his “big terrible thing”.

A freelance writer based in New Delhi, Neha Kirpal writes primarily on books, music, films, theatre and travel.

The views expressed are personal