Matthew Perry’s life became an endless cycle of weight gain and weight loss after he got addicted to drugs and alcohol. Everyone can gauge how the Chandler Bing actor was doing health-wise by observing the weight fluctuations he underwent when he was filming Friends. Matthew Perry’s weight fluctuated between 128 pounds and 225 pounds in that duration. The drastic weight gain and the weight loss he had during those years were crazy and jarring to observe.
If somebody says, “Matthew Perry is a funny guy,” they are wrong because he is not just any funny guy. He is the most funniest guy that has ever lived. It’s not possible to appreciate his sense of humor in mere words but maybe count it by the millions of people he got to laugh and millions of faces he brought a smile on. He touched and made a lasting impact on countless people’s lives with his role as Chandler Bing on the all-time superhit series Friends.
It’s hard to take in that Chandler Bing who used to enrich everyone’s life with his humor, awkwardness, and sarcasm no longer lives. It’s even more painful to learn that this happened not long after he got sober for life. His whole adult life, he struggled with his addiction issues and when he finally got sober and was starting to really live and enjoy his life, he drowned in his jacuzzi. Life is cruel! Matthew Perry had only just started to watch Friends without breaking into tears while watching himself go through a cycle of weight gain and weight loss. He had just started to heal! Did he even finish watching the show?
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Matthew Perry’s Weight Gain and Weight Loss: Details of What Exactly Happened to the Actor!
Matthew Perry (@mattyperry4) and his substance issues are not exactly a secret. He has shared everything about his struggles with drug addiction and alcoholism. But even when it was not all out in the open, everybody could tell that he was going through something and that something was wrong because he was never not having weight gain and weight loss.
Matthew Perry was on a cycle of constant weight gain and weight loss while filming Friends.
Image Source: 7NEWS
Perry rose to fame in 1994 when he started to play the role of Chandler Bing on Friends. After he made it, he probably thought that his problems had come to an end and he was sorted for life. If he thought that, how wrong he was because little did he know that his ‘troubles’ were only going to start. The first two seasons, he was perfectly fine and healthy, from Season 3 onwards, he would either have undergone weight gain or weight loss.
Matthew Perry’s whole life became a cycle of weight fluctuations after that because he got into drugs and alcohol. As much as people love Fools Rush In, they would happily erase that movie from existence if they could because it was when he was filming that movie that he had his first pain pill that eventually made way for his addiction. It was just a little too much Vicodin too much at first that gradually blew up to an insane amount of drinking. He went through a never-ending series of weight gain and weight loss as a result.
It was hard to see how quickly and drastically the Friends star fluctuated in weight during those times because, in one episode, he used to look sickly skinny, and in the next episode, he would look unhealthily bloated. People could tell Matthew Perry was going through a tough time. His weight was going on and off. It was impossible to not notice. They couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was because he had not yet shared his struggles but they knew that something was up and suspected that something involved drugs, going by the cycle of weight gain and weight loss he was on.
Perry made numerous efforts to stay sober. He went to rehab multiple times. One time, he was driven straight from a treatment center to film Friends and he looked very healthy, fine, and happy in that episode which was the one where Monica and Chandler get married. Things would look great at times but it would never last because Perry was unable to stay off drugs and alcohol for too long and fell right back into it. And thus, the drastic weight gain and weight loss.
Matthew Perry’s struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism took a toll on his weight.
Image Source: Digital Spy
Matthew Perry on His Weight Gain and Weight Loss!
The Ron Clark Story actor opened up about those dark times in his memoir titled Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing. He revealed in the book that his weight fluctuated between 128 and 225 pounds from 1994 to 2004 while he was playing Chandler Bing on Friends due to addiction and alcoholism. There was too much weight gain and weight loss and about that, Matthew Perry wrote,
You can track the trajectory for 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. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.
The most obvious weight fluctuation happened at the end of Season 6. One moment, Chandler is proposing Monica, he looks super bloated and a bit unhealthy, and the next season, it’s the same scene, but he’s gotten super thin now. It was very jarring to watch his weight gain and weight loss then and fans were very concerned for his health at the time. It’s not every day they notice someone lose 50 pounds just like that.
Watch the final episode of season six and the first of season seven — the Chandler-Monica proposal episodes. I’m wearing the same clothes in both, since it’s supposed to be the same night, but I must have lost three and a half stone [50 pounds] in the off-season.
Matthew Perry once lost 50 pounds in the off-season.
Image Source: The Australian
It was a difficult, difficult time for Perry and that is why he couldn’t even watch the show. It was hard for us to watch him go through that. Just imagine how it would be for him to watch it, to be reminded of his issues in great detail. He said in an interview that he couldn’t watch the show because all he could see were the physical signs (the weight gain and weight loss) of his addiction, his disease.
I was taking 55 Vicodin 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, ’cause I was brutally thin. I didn’t watch the show, and haven’t watched the show, because I could go, ‘Drinking, opiates, drinking, cocaine. I could tell season by season, by how I looked. That’s why I don’t wanna watch it, because that’s what I see.
Matthew Perry couldn’t even talk about it with a straight face. He couldn’t control himself and burst into tears during an interview with Diane Sawyer when he saw himself on a clip of the sitcom looking extremely skinny. He said that he was out of control at the time and had no idea what was going on. He also shared that the weight loss was the toll his pill addiction took on his body (pills squashed his hunger and he would get unhealthily skinny). As for his weight gain, he said that he put on weight when he was drinking.
