‘Friends’ star reveals he almost died and spent weeks in coma after drug abuse: Shocking details

53-year-old ‘Friends’ star Matthew Perry, who is best known for portraying the role of Chandler Bing in the world famous sitcom, recently revealed in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’ that he spent two weeks in coma after his colon burst due to opioid overuse.

The actor mentioned in the memoir that he almost died in 2018 and that the doctors informed his family that he only had a two percent chance to live. Matthew Perry had claimed at the time that he suffered a “gastrointestinal perforation,” but has now admitted that he spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months to finally get better.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2% 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. 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,” he was quoted as saying.

Adding that his addictions led to 14 surgeries on his stomach, the Friends star said, “That’s a lot of reminders to stay sober. All I have to do is look down. My therapist said, ‘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 anymore.”