Matthew Perry Reveals Health Crisis Caused By Opioid Abuse Left Him With “2 Percent Chance To Live” – Report

19.10.2022 - 18:17 / deadline.com

Matthew Perry is opening up about the health crisis that almost claimed his life several years ago, writing in his upcoming memoir that a burst colon from longterm opioid addiction prompted doctors to inform his family that the actor had a 2% chance of survival.

In a new interview with People magazine, the Friends star, now 53, reveals that when he was 49 he was hospitalized for five months and spent two weeks in a coma. He used a colostomy bag for nine months, he says.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” he tells People. “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 details his addictions to alcohol and opioids in his new autobiography Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, to be released Nov. 1. “I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” he tells the magazine in an exclusive cover story. “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 had previously discussed his battles with substance abuse, but the severity of his health crisis at 49 had been kept under wraps. He also goes into detail about his addictions during the run of Friends.

Cast on the sitcom at age 24, Perry was increasingly turning to alcohol, he says. “I could handle it, kind of,” the actor says. “But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble. But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season 9 was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And