In his new memoir titled Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry reveals that he almost died in 2018 due to opiods overdose. Matthew, who played the popular character of Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom Friends alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc wrote about his addiction and experiencing near death in real life in his memoir.
In an interview, the actor revealed the challenges when he hit rock bottom due to his drugs and alcohol addiction which he turned to as he relied on Vicodin after a jet ski accident in 1997 and 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. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people.”
Perry began his tell-all memoir detailing how he was fighting for his life at the age of 49 when he nearly died. "The doctors told my family that I had a 2 per cent 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.” Perry, 53, was first admitted to the hospital from opioid overuse. He battled gastrointestinal perforation, which caused his colon to burst. The actor spent two weeks in a coma and five months at the hospital while having to use a colostomy bag for nine months.
He even detailed his drug addiction that was severe and said, “I didn’t know how to stop. 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.”During his rise to fame 55 painkillers a day and slimmed down to 128 pounds.
Perry’s addiction to various pills ended up messing with his body to an extent where he had to undergo 14 surgeries just on his stomach. He quipped, “That’s a lot of reminders to stay sober. All I have to do is look down.”He also revealed his therapist’s advice and said, “My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life. And a little window opened and I crawled through it, and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore.”
The Friends star’s memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing hits the stands on November 1.
(Source: People/ANI)
