‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry reveals he secretly spent weeks in a coma

Friends star Matthew Perry has given his first tell-all interview in which he details how his drug and alcohol addictions secretly nearly cost him his life. The star, 53, revealed he was given just a two per cent chance of survival after an opioid addiction caused his colon to burst when he was aged 49, leaving him in a coma for two weeks and spending months in hospital — a fact which his legions of fans were unaware of.

After suffering from a gastrointestinal perforation, Matthew said he had to use a colostomy bag for nine months, has now had 14 surgeries on his stomach in total and been to rehab 15 times in a bid to get clean. Now sober, the beloved actor, best known for playing hapless Chandler Bing has detailed his decades-long battle to rid himself of the disease of addiction. When he was first admitted to the hospital, Perry said: ‘the doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live. 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.’

He told PEOPLE: ‘I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again. 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.’ After having his first taste of alcohol at the age of 13, he continued drinking and was described opioids in 1997 to cope with the pain after suffering a jet ski accident.

Talking about his starring role on Friends at aged 24, his alcohol addiction was starting to surface. He said he could handle it but he was ‘entrenched in a lot of trouble’ by the time he was 34. He said there were years during that time in which he was sober and in fact, he was sober throughout the whole of season nine, the year he got nominated for Best Actor.’I don’t remember three years of [the show],’ he said. ‘Somewhere between Seasons 3 and 6 … I was a little out of it.’

At one point during his Friends career, he admits he was taking 55 Vicodins a day and was down to 128 pounds but yet he ‘didn’t know how to stop.’ He said the disease has got worse and worse and progressive and he’s got older and noted his Friends cast mates ‘were understanding, and they were patient.’ A constant battle, Matthew says: ‘I’m pretty healthy now.’ He is choosing not to say how long he has been sober for but is ‘counting each day.’

His stomach is covered in scars from his 14 surgeries and said they serve as a reminder to stay sober. He said his therapist has told him that he may have to have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life if he takes drugs again, which helps him to avoid relapsing. The actor who checked himself into rehab during his time on Friends, once in 1997 and again in 2001. Matthew famously told the New York Times in 2002, one year after getting sober: ‘When [fame] happens, it’s kind of like Disneyland for a while. For me it lasted about eight months, this feeling of “I’ve made it, I’m thrilled, there’s no problem in the world.”‘

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He told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015: ‘I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life. I learned a lot from my failures. But the best thing about me is that if an alcoholic comes up to me and says, “Will you help me stop drinking?” I will say, “Yes, I know how to do that.”‘ He continues: ‘And then you realize that it doesn’t accomplish anything, it’s certainly not filling any holes in your life. I didn’t get sober because I felt like it. I got sober because I was worried I was going to die the next day. It’s no accident that Chandler is a guy who is trying to deter his own human emotional feelings with laughter. That’s what I did for years. I’ve tried to palm myself off as being a jokester, kind of like hanging out with me is kind of like a vacation. But that could only take me so far.’ Pictured: The cast of Friends at their reunion special in 2021. 

He did his third stint in rehab in May 2011, when a representative for the star said it was to prevent a relapse. Matthew said in a statement in 2011: ‘I’m making plans to go away for a month to focus on my sobriety and to continue my life in recovery. Please enjoy making fun of me on the World Wide Web.’ Addiction left Matthew in a tough state, as he admitted to BBC Radio 2 in 2016. Pictured: The actor with Kat Dennings in 2011. 

In 2017, an adult film star revealed she feared the actor had relapsed after he pleaded with her to get him ’40/50′ prescription pills. Actress Maddy O’Reilly said Perry, a former lover, contacted her two weeks before asking if she knew anyone who could help him ‘purchase some pills’. When Maddy, then 27, asked the actor what kind, he replied: ‘Vicaden (sic)/Roxy’s/oxys.’ He was referring to Vicodin, Roxicodone and OxyContin. All three are powerful and highly addictive opioid prescription painkillers. In text messages seen by DailyMailTV Maddy asked the desperate actor how much he would be willing to pay for the pills, to which he replied: ‘It depends which one is available. But…a lot.’

Perry’s representatives did not respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment at the time. In an exclusive interview conducted then, Maddy told DailyMailTV: ‘I was shocked, I knew he is a recovering addict but it was coming out of nowhere, why would he ask me something like that, it’s not like we partied or I have a reputation for partying. I was really looking disappointed, it went from us making dinner plans to Matthew asking me for 40 to 50 pills. I was also a little offended and annoyed, people often assume because of what I do for a living that’s how we are. Then it triggered, he just told me he was going through a detox and now he’s asking for 40/50 pills, it was a red flag and I was worried. I am concerned for Matthew’s well-being, we’re having the same drugs problem back home in North Carolina, I’ve seen it destroy many people’s lives. I would really hate to see something bad happen to him.’

In 2021, the cast of Friends reunited on screen (pictured) for the first time in 17 years after being delayed by a year due to the Covid pandemic. Friends fans expressed their concern at the time after Matthew appeared to slur his speech in a promo for the special. The actor stammered and stared in the clip, even slurring together his words at one point. When asked if he ever took anything from set as a souvenir, he admitted: ‘I stole the cookie jar that had the clock on it’ with a heavy ‘sh’ sound at the start of ‘stole.” Though his speech was stilted, Matthew’s physical appearance was on the healthier side. His castmates were able to hide any of their concerns, as David and Matt giggled and smiled at the TV star, who played Chandler Bing on the NBC hit. But fans were quick to voice their worries.

‘Just saw People interview and can’t believe how Matthew Perry looks like… seriously it breaks my heart,’ one fan wrote on Twitter. ‘It pains me to see Matthew Perry like this, he just seems off, gazing at the void, speaking slowly,’ wrote another. ‘Hate to say it, but I’m sad and scared like hell for Matthew Perry,’ a third added. ‘Damn, Matthew Perry in those PEOPLE Friends interviews.’ Another tweeted: ‘Just watched @people exclusive interview clip of Friends casts and the time hasn’t been kind. I hope Matthew Perry is okay. Damn how much I love them.’ One wrote: ‘Let’s not use the friends reunion to make fun of the way matthew perry looks these days. people age, funnily enough. ‘Matthew has been through A LOT since friends wrapped up in 2004. be respectful instead of judgmental. hard block me rn if you think making fun of him is funny.’

Ben Winston, who directed Friends: The Reunion, said of those commenting on Perry’s appearance during the HBO Max special: ‘He was great. People can sometimes just be unkind. I wish they weren’t. I loved working with him. He’s a brilliantly funny man and I thought he had some great one-liners in the show. I felt just happy and lucky to be in his presence and directing him on something like this.’

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