Matthew Perry was given a two per cent chance to live when his colon burst due to opioid overuse a few years ago.
In his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the 53-year-old reveals that he almost died at age 49. He spent two weeks in a coma and five months in hospital and had to use a colostomy bag, which collects the body’s waste, for nine months.
“The doctors told my family that I had a two per cent chance to live,” he recalled to People magazine. “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.
“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.”
The Friends star candidly lifts the lid on his addiction to alcohol and painkillers in the memoir, which is released on 1 November.
In the book, he admits that he used to take 55 Vicodin pills a day at the peak of his addiction and has been to rehab 15 times to get sober.
Matthew declined to disclose to People how long he’s currently been sober but noted that he still counts each day.
He shared that looking down at the scars on his stomach – the result of 14 surgeries – and the thought of having a colostomy bag for the rest of his life helps him stay sober.
Explaining why he decided to open up about his addiction now, Matthew said, “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.”
He added that readers will “be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came”.
