Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
As promised to his followers for a few months, actor Matthew Perry will release his autobiography “Friends, lovers and the big terrible thing” on November 1in which he reveals, among other things, that in 2018 he was about to die.
Perry, famous for his character as Chandler Bing on the hit television series “friends” commented to People that four years ago he spent months in the hospital recovering from surgery, as his colon was compromised due to opioid abuse. He was in a coma for two weeks, and had to wear a colostomy bag for nine months.
“The doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance of living. They put me in a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and lungs. And that’s called an Ave Maria. No one survives that,” Matthew said, adding that the same night they placed that machine on four other people, none of whom survived.
The actor began consuming alcohol in large quantities at the age of 24and when the series “friends” was on top of ratings he was taking 55 Vicodin pills a day and weighed just 130 pounds. Although he had moments of sobriety, he checked into rehab 15 times and underwent 14 surgeries. Now he feels grateful to be away from those addictions, but he was very clear that a problem like this can happen to many people: “In the book I write that, if he died, people would be shocked, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone. And that is a very scary thing to live with. What I hope is that people identify with this and know that this disease attacks everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re successful or not, the disease doesn’t care.”
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