By Friends star reveals addictions in ‘tell-all’ interview
The much loved and popular Friends star Matthew Perry has revealed all in his first ‘tell-all’ interview detailing his drug and alcohol addictions, which nearly cost him his life.
The star, 53, revealed he was given just a two percent chance of survival after an opioid addiction caused his colon to burst when he was aged 49.
The actor found himself in a coma for two weeks and spent months in hospital.
After suffering from a gastrointestinal perforation, Matthew said he had to use a colostomy bag for nine months, has now had 14 surgeries on his stomach in total, and has been to rehab 15 times in a bid to get clean.
When he was first admitted to the hospital, he said: ‘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.’ He said.
He told PEOPLE: ‘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.’
The actor referenced his starring role in Friends, where is ‘entrenched in a lot of trouble by the time he was 34. He admits he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and was down to 128 pounds but yet he ‘didn’t know how to stop.’ During his time.
He noted his Friend’s castmates ‘were understanding, and they were patient’ as things got worse.
Matthew says: ‘I’m pretty healthy now’. He is choosing not to say how long he has been sober for but is ‘counting each day.’
His stomach is covered in scars from his 14 surgeries
Matthew famously told the New York Times in 2002, one year after getting sober: ‘When [fame] happens, it’s kind of like Disneyland for a while.
‘For me, it lasted about eight months, this feeling of “I’ve made it, I’m thrilled, there’s no problem in the world”.
