Matthew Perry , beloved icon and star of Friends , is opening up about his struggles with addiction in a way he never has before, with the upcoming release of his new memoir , Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing , which will hit bookshelves on November 1st.
Matthew shared the story of how he almost died to due opioid overuse in a new interview where he got more candid than ever.
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“I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” Matthew said of why he chose to release a memoir now.
“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,” he told People .
Matthew also revealed that he almost died at age 49, four years ago.
He stated that his colon burst due to opioid overuse, spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital.
“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” Matthew said. “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.”
Matthew said that during the filming of Friends , his co-stars stuck by him. “It’s like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.”
“I’m pretty healthy now,” he went on.
“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,” he joked .
“It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education,” Matthew said of why he doesn’t publicly share how long he’s been sober.
“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.”
“There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived,” Matthew went on. “So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason.”
“I think they’ll be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came,” he says of fans reading the book.
“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.”
We’re so happy to hear that Matthew is in a better place!
h/t: People
