Sixteen years after getting clean, Matthew Perry is drinking again — and the Friends star, who entered rehab in 1997 and again in 2001, has been keeping his relapse a secret for quite some time now.

The 48-year-old has been open about his battle with his years-long struggle with alcohol and prescription pills in the past, but insiders tell In Touch he’s been quiet this time around. “Matthew has been really clever about keeping the fact that he’s relapsed a secret for so long. It’s like he’s in denial,” says an insider. “He’s been seen drinking at private members clubs, where he knows he won’t be photographed. His go-to drink is vodka and soda,” a source explains.

the odd couple

Matthew Perry on the set of The Odd Couple.

The Odd Couple star is “back to old routines,” a second insider says, with the insider adding that he recently “asked a girl he met on [the celebrity dating app] Raya to meet him for a late-night drink at a private members’ club” and he “showed up seeming drunk and drank alcohol during the date.”

But alcohol isn’t his only issue. In a Nov. 14 online report, a woman claiming to be Matthew’s former lover, porn star Maddy O’Reilly, said that the actor contacted her two weeks earlier and asked her to help him find Vicodin, Roxicodone, and OxyContin. And while Maddy tells In Touch she never obtained any pills for Matthew, friends are worried. “These new revelations about him asking for pills shows just how low and desperate he [has] become,” says the second insider.

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