“Friends” actor Matthew Perry feels “grateful to be a live” after a lengthy battle with addiction and repeated trips to rehab, he said in a new interview.
Perry, who starred as the witty Chandler Bing on the New York City-set sitcom, says he was given a 2% chance of survival after his colon burst as the result of opioid use, according to People.
“I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs,” Perry, 53, told the magazine. “And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
The health crisis left Perry hospitalized for five months, including two weeks in a coma. His condition required him to use a colostomy bag for nine months.
The actor felt he could handle an addiction to alcohol toward the beginning of his tenure on “Friends,” which premiered on NBC in 1994 when he was 24.
“But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble,” Perry told People. “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 guess which season I got nominated for best actor [at the Emmys]? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.’”
Perry said his struggles worsened as he aged, including using 55 Vicodin pills each day at one point while he was starring on “Friends.”
“I didn’t know how to stop,” Perry said. “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.”
After 15 rehab stints and 14 stomach surgeries, Perry told People he’s sober and “pretty healthy now.” He chronicles his addiction struggles in a new memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” out Nov. 1.
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