Matthew Perry nearly died in 2018 as a result of opioid use. The Friends actor writes about it in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, out November 1.
The 53-year-old announced at the time that he had suffered a gastrointestinal perforation. As the magazine “People” now reported, his colon was actually ruptured as a result of opioid use. Perry was therefore in a coma for two weeks, spent almost six months in the hospital and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months.
“I wanted to do this publicly when I was safe from falling back into the dark side of it all,” Perry told the magazine. “I had to wait until I was relatively safely sober – and off the active illnesses of alcoholism and addiction – to write it all down. The main thing was that I was sure it would help people.”
Perry said doctors initially told his family he only had a 2 percent chance of survival. “I was put in a thing called an ECMO machine that does all the breathing for your heart and lungs,” Perry said. That’s called an emergency nail. Nobody survives that.”
Perry is best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends. As he said, his addiction to alcohol began during the early days of the series, when he was only 24. As he told People, it also jeopardized his involvement with the show until he went sober by Season 9. Now he is certain that as a result of the gastrointestinal rupture he has also overcome opioid addiction. “My therapist told me, ‘next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just remember to have a colostomy bag for the rest of your life.’ And a little window opened up, I crawled through and I don’t want any more Oxycontin.”