Matthew Perry Comes Clean to PEOPLE

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday August 29, 2002 01:00 PM EDT

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Even though his current movie "Serving Sara" has proved to be a box-office disappointment -- it grossed only $5.8 million in its opening weekend -- this week's PEOPLE cover boy Matthew Perry, 33, is looking on the brighter side of things. "Whether it's successful or not doesn't matter," he tells the magazine. "It's the movie in which my life got better." It was a life that needed turning around, the "Friends" star admits. In the interview, Perry discusses his four-year struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. "I've been through a very dark time," he says, revealing that he got hooked on the painkiller Vicodin after a Jet Ski accident and was downing "an insane number of pills" (some 20 to 30 daily) and drinking "probably a quart of vodka a day." Perry, who says he is clean now, tells PEOPLE that he hit a wall on Feb. 23, 2001, when he called his parents from a Dallas hotel room and asked for help. He flew to Los Angeles, where his parents drove him to a rehabilitation center. He stayed in treatment for two and a half months. "I learned that a happy life is possible without alcohol or drugs," he says, admitting outright that there's "no gray area. I'm an alcoholic."

For more on Matthew Perry's road to recovery, check out PEOPLE's cover story.