AceShowbiz - Matthew Perry felt "soft and sad" by his drunken impotence when he was trying to lose his virginity. The actor, 53, was horrified as he failed to link his boozing with being unable to perform in bed when he tried to have sex with ex-girlfriend Tricia Fisher, the half-sister of Carrie Fisher.

In his autobiography "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing", the star said he had been drinking for a few years when he tried to lose his virginity as a teen in his native Canada. He recalled the incident with Tricia, now 53, whom he started dating aged 18 in the 1980s, happened when he drank six beers for courage.

He confessed, "By then I'd been drinking for a few years. I failed to make the correlation between the booze and my private parts not working... nothing worked; nothing."

"Horrified yet again, I forsook the loving arms of Tricia Fisher and padded my slim, naked body over to a chair in the apartment. I sat there, soft, and sad, my two hands cupped over my lap like a nun's during Vespers, doing my best to cover my embarrassment and maybe a tear or two."

But he said about Tricia helping him conquer his problem, "She walked over to me, took my hand, led me back to bed, laid me down, and sure enough... sheer glory, for two whole minutes!"

"That night, by the dint of a miraculous universe and the ministrations of a beautiful young woman who deserved better, I finally first misplaced my virginity then lost it altogether, and impotence has not been part of my vocabulary since, just as she promised it wouldn't be. Everything about me - at least physically - works just fine."

Matthew added he spent years "walking around the planet thinking sex was something for other people" and hiding his "great ugly secret" of impotence. In the depths of the "Friends" actor's drink and drugs addictions, he was washing down 55 Vicodin a day with a quarter bottle of vodka.