Friends' Matthew Perry spent two weeks in a coma at height of his addiction
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Friends legend Matthew Perry was comatose for a whole fortnight during the height of his drug and alcohol addiction.
Promoting his new memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which hits bookshelves in less than two weeks, the former Chandler Bing actor recalled his scary near-death experience to People.
"The doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance to live," he said, referring to the year 2018 when his colon burst due to consistent opioid usage.
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"I was put on a thing called an ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that's called a Hail Mary. No one survives that."
Following this gastrointestinal perforation, Perry was forced to live with a colostomy bag for nine months, having undergone 14 surgeries on his stomach too.
Such was his dependence on Vicodin during the Friends phenomenon, he'd take 55 pills per day, which eventually reduced his body weight to 128 pounds.
"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."
Throughout this reflection period – he shared he's "pretty healthy" these days – the star has come to realise that "everything starts with sobriety, because if you don't have sobriety, you're going to lose everything that you put in front of it, so my sobriety is right up there".
He added: "I'm an extremely grateful guy. I'm grateful to be alive, that's for sure. And that gives me the possibility to do anything."
For more on drug addiction and dependency, including information and support, please visit FRANK or Action on Addiction.
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