In the most recent issue of People, the actor confesses that his colon ruptured in 2018 when he was 49 years old, putting him in critical condition.
The revelation is also included in his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (published on November 1), which takes readers behind the scenes of his stint playing Chandler Bing on the popular sitcom Friends in 1994 and his battles with addiction.
Perry, who is now 53, spent five months in the hospital recovering after falling into a coma for two months. Additionally, he was required to use a colostomy bag for nine months. In this week’s cover story for PEOPLE, he said, “The doctors told my family that I had a 2% chance to live.”
“I was put on a device known as an ECMO machine, which manages your heart and lungs’ breathing for you. And that is referred to as a Hail Mary. Nobody makes it through that.”
When he was 24 years old and initially cast in Friends in the early 1990s, his alcohol problems started. “I could kind of manage it. But by the time I was 34, I was deeply troubled “Perry remarked. But I was sober for some of that period.
The sitcom’s ninth and final season, which aired in 2002, was “the year that I was sober the whole way through,” according to Perry. “And guess for which season I was considered for best actor? That ought to tell me something, I thought.”
The actor, who has long spoken up about his struggles with addiction while filming the show, was using 55 Vicodins a day and weighed 128 pounds at one of his lowest times. Perry admitted, “I didn’t know how to stop.”
Matthew Perry’s illness was ‘very serious’ following emergency surgeryhttps://t.co/tx9ggXvghk pic.twitter.com/oXpW2AhcnD
— Goss.ie (@goss_ie) September 20, 2018
“I would begin packing if the police showed up at my house and threatened to throw me in jail if I drank tonight. Because the illness and addiction are chronic, I was unable to stop. So as you age, it only becomes worse.”
Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc were kind and patient with him, according to Perry. “It reminds me of penguins.
In the wild, penguins will surround and support each other when they are sick or severely injured. Until the penguin can stand on its own, they proceed around it. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.”
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Perry, who has visited rehab roughly 15 times, claimed to be “quite healthy” at the time and shared that he is motivated to support others going through the same struggles. Additionally, he simply feels grateful to be alive.
When I was free from the threat of reentering the dark side of things, I wanted to share, Perry remarked. “To write it all down, I had to wait until I was largely comfortably sober and free from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction. The most important factor was that I had a good feeling that it will benefit others.”
Perry is best known for his ten seasons as the snarky Chandler Bing in the television series Friends. For HBO Max’s 2021 reunion special, he recently got back again with his co-stars. The Kennedys After Camelot, The Good Fight, and The Odd Couple are just a few of Perry’s most recent TV appearances.
