Friends star Matthew Perry secretly spent weeks in hospital fighting for his life over drug incident
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Actor Matthew Perry who starred as Chandler Bing in the hit sitcom Friends has opened up about a scary-sounding time in his life that saw him secretly spend weeks in hospital due to drug misuse.
His struggles with addiction have been public knowledge for many years (with him even once commenting that he doesn't remember a great deal about his time on the show due to substance abuse), but in his new memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew reveals more than ever before about his mental health battles.
When speaking about the new book in a recent interview, he shared that just a few years ago, back in 2018, he spent two weeks in a coma - at the time, the press reported that the actor was unwell with gastrointestinal perforation, but Matthew has now said that he was hospitalised due to opioid misuse that caused his colon to burst - and that doctors rated his chance of survival at just 2%.
"The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live," he revealed to People Magazine. "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."
Thankfully, Matthew did defy the odds and pull through, but his recovery wasn't plain sailing. He spent five months in hospital and used a colostomy bag for nine months.
He says speaking to the right therapist about his issues signalled a real turning point and made sobriety seem like a real possibility. "My therapist said, 'The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life' – and a little window opened and I crawled through it. I no longer want Oxycontin [a semi-synthetic opioid medication] anymore."
Thankfully, Matthew is now confident in his health and joked, "I'm pretty healthy now, 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."
That's what we like to hear.
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