Matthew Perry Opens Up About Near-Death Experience From Opioid Overuse: 'I Had a 2 Percent Chance to Live'

Matthew Perry is telling all in a new memoir, sharing details about a near-death experience he faced just a few years ago as a result of his battle with addiction. 

"I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again," he says in a new cover story for 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."

In his book -- Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, out Nov. 1 -- Perry recalls suffering a gastrointestinal perforation at age 49 when his colon burst from opioid overuse. The 53-year-old Friends star fought for his life, spending two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital, and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months. 

"The doctors told my family that I had a two 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."

The fact that he did survive it weighs on Perry. 

"There were five people put on an ECMO machine that night and the other four died and I survived," he says. "So the big question is why? Why was I the one? There has to be some kind of reason."

Perry says that his addiction to alcohol was just beginning when he was cast on the hit NBC sitcom at age 24. At one point during the series' 10-season run, he was taking 55 Vicodin a day and -- at 6 feet tall -- weighed only 128 pounds. "I didn't know how to stop," he admits.

"By the time I was 34, I was really entrenched in a lot of trouble," he shares. "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.'"

As Perry says he attempted to keep his condition under wraps, dramatic changes to his physical appearance were often a telling sign of his state of sobriety. The show's cast, he says, "were understanding, and they were 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."

Today, Perry declines to share how long he has been sober but is candid about his relapses. The actor has been to rehab 15 times. 

"It's important, but if you lose your sobriety, it doesn't mean you lose all that time and education," he explains. "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."

Perry reveals that he has had 14 surgeries on his stomach, and that the scars serve as "reminders to stay sober." But the biggest motivating factor for steering clear of drugs came from his therapist, who told him, "The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life." 

"A little window opened and I crawled through it," Perry continues. "I no longer want Oxycontin anymore." 

Perry's candid revelations drew praise on social media, including a glowing tribute from Jamie Lee Curtis. The Halloween Ends actress referenced her own struggles with addiction -- and how the media actually helped her overcome it -- in her remarks.

"I am so happy that Matthew is sharing his secret so that others can realize the power of addiction and that one can find help," she wrote on Instagram. "I've been sober for coming up 24 years off of a Vicodin addiction, and it was when a journalist wrote an article in @esquire about his own addiction to Vicodin, that I actually realized I wasn't so alone and so unique. That became the stepping point for me to seek the help I needed which I received in recovery rooms all over the world. This new synthetic opiate, Fentanyl, is a ruthless, killer and much more powerful and addictive. Whoever reads this, who is struggling, please know you are not alone and there are many other people who share your disease and have found recovery."

Last year, Perry's Friends co-stars rallied around him once again after appearing together on their Friends: The Reunion special in 2021. During the taping, Perry revealed that he used to “go into convulsions” if the studio audience didn’t laugh at his jokes when they taped the show.

"To me, I felt like I was going to die if they didn’t laugh," the sitcom star, who portrayed Chandler Bing, said in the HBO Max feature.  "And it’s not healthy, for sure."

"I didn’t understand the level of anxiety and self-torture [that] was put on Matthew Perry, if he didn’t get that laugh, and the devastation that he felt," Jennifer Aniston said on the Today show. "[But it] makes a lot of sense."

For more on the group's emotional reunion, watch below. 

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