Matthew Perry recounts being confronted by Jennifer Aniston about alcohol abuse

Matthew Perry revisits the "devastating" moment his Friends costar Jennifer Aniston confronted him about his alcohol use in his forthcoming memoir.

In Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing (out Nov. 1), the actor — best known for his role as the sarcastic Chandler Bing in the hit 1994 sitcom — takes readers behind the scenes of his time on the show and his drug and alcohol addiction. An excerpt published in The Times reveals it was Aniston who caught wind of Perry's troubles despite him never having been drunk on set.

"I know you're drinking," Aniston had said. Perry, who also reveals in his memoir that he had a big crush on Aniston during their time on the sitcom, writes, "I had long since gotten over her — ever since she started dating Brad Pitt, I was fine — and had worked out exactly how long to look at her without it being awkward, but still, to be confronted by Jennifer Aniston was devastating."

"And I was confused," he continues, adding that he asked Aniston how she could tell. "I've been trying to hide it." Perry writes, "'We can smell it,' she said, in a kind of weird but loving way, and the plural 'we' hit me like a sledgehammer. 'I know I'm drinking too much,' I said, 'but I don't exactly know what to do about it.'"

Perry called the confrontation a "scary" moment in a preview for his upcoming interview with Diane Sawyer, set to air Oct. 28 on ABC. He told Sawyer that Aniston remained in close contact with him during those dark times. "She was the one that reached out the most," Perry said. "You know, I'm really grateful to her for that."

Perry's memoir also dives deep into his opioid overuse, which nearly cost him his life a few years ago. The actor, now 53, recounts nearly dying at the age of 49 after his colon burst due to drug overuse. "The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live," he recently PEOPLE. "I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that's called a Hail Mary. No one survives that."

Along with Aniston, Perry said fellow costars Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc were understanding and patient with him. "It's like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up," Perry told the magazine. "They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That's kind of what the cast did for me."

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