Drug abuse left me with a 2% chance of survival – but co-stars supported me, reveals Friends star Matthew Perry
FRIENDS star Matthew Perry has laid bare the full extent of his crippling drug and alcohol addiction in an extraordinarily honest new memoir.
Before yesterday’s launch of the book Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing, the A-list actor told how he had nearly died and had had a one in 50 chance of surviving after his colon burst due to his opiate use.
It is the first time he has spoken about how he spent two weeks in a coma and five months fighting for his life in hospital after suffering a gastrointestinal perforation. He had to use a colostomy bag for nine months after the terrifying incident in 2018.
Matthew, 53, told People magazine: “The doctors told my family that I had a two per cent 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.”
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His struggles with substance abuse have been well documented but until now he has never been as honest about the extent of his addiction, and the impact on his health.
He said he started drinking heavily when he first joined the cast of Friends in 1994, aged 24.
But when he was involved in a jet ski accident in 1997, he was prescribed the painkiller Vicodin, and quickly became reliant on it, even after his injuries healed.
That was the first time Matthew admitted himself to rehab, spending 20 days at the Hazelden Betty Ford Center in Minnesota.
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But it wasn’t enough to get him clean, and Matthew — who has previously admitted he “doesn’t remember filming three years” of Friends — continued to fight his demons.
He tried to hide his condition, but his yo-yoing weight from series to series alarmed both his co-stars and his fans.
He said: “I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble.
“But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season Nine 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’.”
At his worst, Matthew was taking 55 Vicodin tablets a day and weighed just over 9st.
He has said previously: “I was out of control and very unhealthy.” And he joked: “I returned to my original birth weight.”
By 2001 he was drinking a litre of vodka a day. He told People yesterday: “I didn’t know how to stop.
“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.”
I couldn’t stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older.
With the support of his Friends cast mates — Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer — Matthew attempted to get clean, despite numerous relapses.
He said: “They were understanding and they were 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.”
To date, Matthew has had 15 stays in rehab but says he is “pretty healthy now”. He doesn’t want to say how long he has been sober, but says he counts every day.
He added: “It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education.
“Your sober date changes, but that’s all that changes. You know everything you knew before. As long as you were able to fight your way back without dying, you learn a lot.”
He says he is kept going by the scars from the 14 operations he has had on his stomach.
Look down
He added: “That’s a lot of reminders to stay sober. All I have to do is look down.”
Severe addiction to opiods such as OxyContin — which Matthew was also hooked on — can cause severe constipation, and in turn, serious bowel problems, which is what happened to him when he was 49.
After his near-death experience, he was warned that if he continued taking drugs he may lose control of his bowel altogether.
Matthew told People: “My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking OxyContin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life’.
“And a little window opened, and I crawled through it, and I no longer want OxyContin any more.”
Back from the brink, Matthew has a new appreciation for life, and wants to help others suffering from addiction. The reason he has written the book, he says, is because he was “pretty certain that it would help people”.
He added: “There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night, and the other four died, and I survived. So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason.”
Matthew’s searing memoir — which he vowed to write only once he was “safe from going into the dark side of everything again” — is a shocking account of nearly three decades of addiction, which he admits should have killed him.
As for the book’s readers he said: “I think they’ll be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came.
I think they’ll be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came.
“I say in the book that if I did die, it would shock people, but it wouldn’t surprise anybody. And that’s a very scary thing to be living with.
“So my hope is that people will relate to it and know that this disease attacks everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not successful, the disease doesn’t care.”
Fans will be reassured by the news that Matthew is healthy, after he prompted fears when he slurred his words and nodded off during an interview to promote the Friends reunion in May 2021.
A source close to the Canadian actor said at the time that he wasn’t suffering a relapse, but had undergone dental work that left him feeling unwell.
But after so many ups and downs over the years, Matthew knows that he can’t take anything for granted.
He said he is “grateful to be alive” and is proud of himself for clawing his way back.
He said: “What I’m most surprised with is my resilience. The way that I can bounce back from all of this torture and awfulness.”
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And no matter how shocking, even his most crushing lows and toughest struggles will be detailed in the book, released on November 1.
He added: “Even though it’s a little scary to tell all your secrets in a book, I didn’t leave anything out. Everything’s in there.”
