What does Matthew Perry say about using your voice for social change?

I am not the activist guy. I want to be honest about that. I am not Ossie Davis. I am not Bono. My voice was the voice that asked if anybody had a piece of gum on a soundstage in Burbank. So I want to be very careful about claiming a platform I did not earn through any kind of moral courage.

But what I will say is — addiction. I do know about that one. I lost almost everything to it, twice, and a lot of people I loved lost everything to it, completely. So when I finally got sober enough to put a sentence together about it — in the book, in the interviews, in the foundation — I made a decision that I was not going to make it pretty. Because the pretty version of recovery kills people. The pretty version says it was a phase and I am fine now and pass the wine. The actual version is — I had fourteen stomach surgeries, I had a colostomy bag, I died for five minutes, I cannot drink a beer on a Tuesday like a normal human being, and I am still — to this day — one bad night from being right back in it.

That is the voice I have for social change. The one that says addiction is a disease, not a moral failure. The one that says treatment should be available to the kid in Akron the same way it was available to me in Malibu. The one that says we have to stop being polite about something that is taking a hundred thousand Americans a year. If anyone heard me say that and got into a meeting because of it — that is the only piece of fame I want to have meant something.