‘Doctors told my family I had a 2 per cent chance to live’: Matthew Perry nearly died in 2018

Friends actor Matthew Perry has a history of struggling with addiction and once, it almost killed him.

The sitcom’s Chandler Bing told People magazine that he nearly died in 2018 after his colon burst due to an overuse of opioids. At the time, news broke about Perry’s hospitalisation but details about the extremity of his condition were not revealed. The actor was in a coma for two weeks and hospitalised for five months in total. He used a colostomy bag — a part of the large intestine attached externally through surgery to collect waste — for nine months.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 per cent chance to live,” said the 17 Again actor. “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.”

Perry has been open about his addictions in the past as well. He has talked about how even during some parts of filming Friends, he was struggling with sobriety. He recalled how at one point, he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and his weight went down to an alarming 128 pounds.

“I didn’t know how to stop,” Perry said. “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.”

The actor told the publication his addiction to different kinds of pills has thus far resulted in 14 surgeries on his stomach. “That’s a lot of reminders to stay sober. All I have to do is look down,” he said.

His therapist also served him with another reminder to lay off the pills by pointing towards the repercussions he would have to live with. “My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life,’” the actor said. “And a little window opened and I crawled through it, and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore.”

Perry opens up more about the incident and his life in his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. The book will release on November 1.