Friends star Matthew Perry has come clean about his former drug use in a brand new memoir, entitled Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
According to Perry, his addiction struggles became so severe that he almost died in 2018, at the young age of 49, when his colon burst from opioid overuse.
As a result, Perry spent two weeks in a coma, five months in hospital, and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months to treat the ongoing repercussions.
“The doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance to live,” Perry revealed to People when speaking about his memoir.
“I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”
The 14 scars on his stomach – as well as the idea of wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of his life – serve as an ongoing reminder to Perry to stay well away from Oxycontin.
“All I have to do [to be reminded about why I still don’t take Oxy] is to look down”.
“My therapist said, ‘next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life”, Perry recalls. “And a little window opened and I crawled through it and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore.”
Perry said that by releasing his memoir, he hoped that he could help sufferers of drug and alcohol addiction move on and create a better life for themselves.
“I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again,” he told People.
“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.”
It is not clear how long Perry has been sober after previously relapsing more than 15 times he noted that he was a “pretty healthy guy right now”.
“It’s important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn’t mean you lose all that time and education,” he says. “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.”
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