'Friends' Actor Matthew Perry Opens Up About How He 'Nearly Died' During Health Crisis
The actor details his battle with drug addiction in the upcoming memoir, 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.'
Matthew Perry is getting candid about his long battle with drug abuse ahead of the upcoming release of his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
While promoting his book in a new conversation with People, the Friends alum, 53, opened up about a terrifying near-death experience he went through just a few years ago.
When he was 49, the actor found himself in critical condition after his colon burst from opioid overuse, causing him to spend two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital. He also had to use a colostomy bag for nine months as a result of the health crisis.
"The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live," Perry recalled to the publication. "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."
At the time, Perry publicly revealed that he suffered a "gastrointestinal perforation," but he hadn't told the full story until now. The 17 Again star is expected to divulge more details from his longtime battle with addiction in the upcoming memoir, including his experience with substance abuse while on the set of Friends.
Perry told the outlet that his alcohol addiction was just beginning when he was first cast on the NBC sitcom at age 24, although it ended up spiraling as the show went on, with him taking 55 Vicodin a day and weighing only 128 pounds at one point.
"I didn't know how to stop," he admitted. "If the police came over to my house and said, 'If you drink tonight, we're going to take you to jail,' I'd start packing. I couldn't stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older."
As for his cast mates on the hit show—which include Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow—Perry said they were "understanding" and "patient."
"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. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That's kind of what the cast did for me," he stated, noting that there were some points of the show when he was completely sober.
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"Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, 'That should tell me something,'" he added.
While Perry didn't disclose how long he has now been sober, he revealed he has been to rehab 15 different times, calling himself "pretty healthy now."
As for his upcoming memoir, Perry "wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again...I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober — and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction — to write it all down. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people."
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing will be available to readers on Tuesday, Nov. 1.
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