Matthew Perry stepped out in Los Angeles looking unkempt months after he spoke up on how nightmare addiction almost took his life. The star looked tired as he supervised his home renovation in LA on Wednesday, and returned to his temporary hideaway in Hidden Hills holding a Starbucks drink in hand.
Keep reading for the details.
The 53-year-old actor has been taking time off after wrapping up his book tour for his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
In the memoir, the Friends actor shared the height of his crazy drug and alcohol addiction that nearly caused his death.
He revealed that the doctors gave him a two percent chance of survival after an opioid addiction led to a ruptured colon at age 49. This left him in a coma for two weeks and spending months in the hospital ward, which fans had no idea.
"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."
Perry kept it casual for his outing while rocking a blue jumper, navy T-shirt, and jeans. He carried a drink in his hand as he emerged from the car and an unruly facial hair. The rare appearance came after his book tour.
The star, now sober, carefully detailed everything leading to his years-long battle of getting over addiction and leading a clean life, void of substance influence.
"I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again." he revealed to PEOPLE.
The actor was pretty sure his book would help people, since he waited to be completely pure and in a healthy state of mind before putting the pen down.
"...And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people."
He spoke about his role in Friends, which began at 24 when his addiction began to surface. While he could handle it, it became out of hand by age 34. However, there were years he was utterly sober, like throughout season 9 when he got nominated for Best Actor.
Still, on his Friends journey, the actor spilled that there were days he was downing 55 Vicodin a day and went down to 128 pounds, but he couldn't get himself to stop.
"You can track the trajectory for my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season. When I'm carrying weight, it's alcohol; when I'm skinny, it's pills; when I have a goatee, it's lots of pills."
The addiction got worse and progressed as he got older, but he noted that his Friends co-stars were very understanding and patient with him throughout their time on set.
