Actor Matthew Perry has opened up about his opioid addiction, sharing new details about the time he was hospitalized in 2018. At the time, it was only divulged that Perry had suffered a gastrointestinal perforation. In his upcoming memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry reveals that the situation was actually much more serious than that. In fact, Perry’s colon had burst and nearly killed the Friends star, a result of the damage he’d been doing to his body through opioid abuse.
Ahead of the book’s publication on Nov. 1, Perry spoke more about the incident in a new interview with People. He addressed his addiction struggles and said he hopes by coming clean in his memoir, his story will help inspire others. Perry explained how he was in such bad shape that his survival is a downright miracle, and he can’t help but feel that there must be some reason why he pulled through when so many others in that situation do not.
“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… 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.”
Matthew Perry Struggled for Decades
Perry also delves deep into his addiction issues he’d endured over the years, which came and went during his Friends run. Alcoholism had begun to affect his work, as Perry says the only year he was nominated for Best Actor was the season when he managed to stay sober. While he thought that this should “tell me something,” Perry says he still was not able to stop, noting that this kind of thing gets “worse and worse as you grow older.”
The good news is that Perry is doing much better these days. After 14 surgeries on his stomach, he’s got permanent scars to remind him of what can happen if he’s thinking about relapsing, noting all he needs to do is “look down.” Perry also feels that he can learn from these struggles as he continues along on his journey of sobriety, reiterating his hope that others who are struggling that read his book will be motivated to find their own way back to getting clean.
“It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education. Your sober date changes, but that’s all that changes. You know everything you knew before, as long as you were able to fight your way back without dying, you learn a lot. I say in the book that if I did die, it would shock people, but it wouldn’t surprise anybody. And that’s a very scary thing to be living with. So my hope is that people will relate to it, and know that this disease attacks everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re successful or not successful, the disease doesn’t care.”
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing will be released in bookstores on Nov. 1, 2022.
