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The star of the popular American TV series "Friends" Matthew Perry spoke about his struggle with addiction and the difficult life journey he has now put behind him, revealing some lesser-known details. Matthew, who played the character of Chandler Bing in the series, wrote a memoir "Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing" which is due to be published on November 1, in which he describes his journey in which his ups and downs are intertwined.
He began the memoir by revealing that at the age of 49, he almost died when his colon ruptured due to drug abuse. Matthew then suffered from a gastrointestinal perforation. He spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital.
He had to use a colostomy bag for months to treat the health crisis.
Matthew Perry Reveals Health Crisis
“The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” he tells People. “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”.
When Perry got the role in "Friends" he was 24 years old, and his alcohol addiction was just beginning to surface. “I could handle it, kind of,” the actor says.
“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 9 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.'
”
Although he tried to hide his condition, the dramatic changes in his appearance each year reflected his state of sobriety.
As he said, his fellow actors "were understanding and patient." "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”. " he revealed. actor. He quite frankly revealed that he has been in rehabilitation 15 times in the past years, while to date he has undergone stomach surgery 14 times.