Former ‘Friends’ Actor Shares Near-Death Experience Due To Drug Use

It is an open secret that actor Matthew Perry has had his share of struggling with drug addiction. Now, the 53-year-old shares how he nearly died a few years back due to opioid overuse.

Perry was 49-years-old at the time and admitted that he spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital after suffering a gastrointestinal perforation.

The “Friends” actor added that he needed the aid of a colostomy bag for nine months to treat the medical issue.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” Perry said to 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 is set to share his struggles with drugs and alcohol addictions on Nov. 1 in his new memoir titled “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”

“I’m pretty healthy now,” Perry said to the publication. “I’ve got to not go to the gym much more, because I don’t want to only be able to play superheroes. But no, I’m a pretty healthy guy right now.”

Perry admitted that he underwent rehab 15 times. However, he claims that he is now healthier.

“What I’m most surprised with is my resilience,” he said. “The way that I can bounce back from all of this torture and awfulness. Wanting to tell the story, even though it’s a little scary to tell all your secrets in a book, I didn’t leave anything out. Everything’s in there.”

Perry allegedly turned to alcohol and drugs, relying on Vicodin following a jet ski accident in 1997. As he was rising to fame at the time, he allegedly took 55 painkillers a day, a reason why his weight went down to 128 pounds.

"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," Perry said.