Matthew Perry gets candid about his drug use and how it almost killed him in his upcoming book Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
In a new interview with People, he says he almost died when his colon burst due to opioid abuse four years ago. He spent two weeks in a coma, five months in the hospital, and nine months with a colostomy bag.
He says, “The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live. 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 one point during his “Friends” days, Matthew was taking 55 Vicodin a day, and was down to 128 pounds. Season 9 was the only year he was sober all the way through.
But he credits the other cast members for sticking with him . . . 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.”
Perry has been to rehab 15 times over the years, and while he won’t reveal how long he’s been sober currently, he says he’s “a pretty healthy guy right now.”
And that’s why he finally wrote his book. “I 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 is out November 1st.
