A Friends star has opened up about his addiction battle while on the show. Photo / Supplied
A Friends star has opened up about his addiction battle while on the show. Photo / Supplied
Warning: This story contains distressing content
Matthew Perry made a sad admission during a recent interview.
The 53-year-old actor, most well known for his time as Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom Friends, has revealed he “didn’t know how to stop” drinking at the height of his fame and it almost resulted in his death.
Having starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, and Courteney Cox from 1994 to 2004, the actor explained that while he had achieved moments of sobriety in the show’s heyday, there were times that his addiction and reliance on alcohol just got “worse”.
Speaking to People Magazine, the star said: “When ‘Friends’ started, I could handle it, kind of. But by the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble. But there were years that I was sober during that time. Season nine was the year that I was sober the whole way through. And guess which season I got nominated for best actor? I was like, ‘That should tell me something.’
“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.”
The 17 Again actor went on to say that his addiction to substances got so bad it almost resulted in his death.
At the time of his health scare, Perry said he suffered a gastrointestinal perforation due to opioid abuse, however, he has now admitted during that scare, he spent two weeks in a coma during a five-month stay in hospital and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months.
Matthew Perry has opened up about his addiction battle. Photo / FilmMagic
Perry said his family was warned he only had a small chance of living and became the only one of five patients to survive on his ward.
“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 per cent chance to live.
“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 and I no longer want Oxycontin any more.
“There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived. So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason.”
Perry - who achieved sobriety some years ago - has now opened up about his addiction struggles in new memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, and claimed that readers will be “surprised” at just how “bad” his struggles have been and how close he came to death.
He told People magazine: “I think they’ll be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came. 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.”
