Matthew Perry’s forthcoming memoir continues to make headlines because the Associates alum opens up about his crippling dependancy to alcohol and opioids for the primary time. In Associates, Lovers, and the Large Horrible Factor, Perry reveals his coronary heart stopped beating for 5 minutes whereas at a therapy heart in Switzerland the place he was nonetheless feeding his capsule behavior. It value him a task in final yr’s star-studded political satire Do not Look Up.
Perry, who is eighteen months sober, secretly went to the posh rehab facility someday within the final two years. Based on an excerpt of his e book obtained by Rolling Stone, the actor satisfied medical doctors that he had extreme abdomen ache in order that they’d prescribe him medication.
“In actual fact, I used to be OK,” he writes.
Perry was prescribed hydrocodone, however to ease the ache additional, medical doctors determined to “put some type of bizarre medical machine in my again.” The night time earlier than the surgical procedure, he stayed up taking capsules. When he was administered the anesthesia drug propofol forward of the operation, Perry’s coronary heart stopped.
“I used to be given the shot at 11:00 a.m.,” he pens. “I awakened eleven hours later in a unique hospital. Apparently, the propofol had stopped my coronary heart. For 5 minutes. It wasn’t a coronary heart assault — I did not flatline — however nothing had been beating. I used to be instructed that some beefy Swiss man actually did not need the man from Associates dying on his desk and did CPR on me for the complete 5 minutes, beating and pounding my chest. If I hadn’t been on Associates, would he have stopped at three minutes? Did Associates save my life once more?”
Perry provides: “He could have saved my life, however he additionally broke eight of my ribs.”
Whereas the medical scare took a bodily toll on Perry, it impacted his profession, too. The actor was set to look alongside Meryl Streep in Do not Look Up. He managed to movie one scene previous to his Switzerland rehab stint, nevertheless it did not make the film’s remaining lower. After almost dying on the working desk, he was in an excessive amount of ache to return to the set of Adam McKay’s movie. Perry says it could have been the “greatest film I would gotten ever.”
Switzerland wasn’t Perry’s solely brush with demise. In 2018, his colon burst from opioid misuse. At one level Perry was ingesting vodka by the quart and taking 55 Vicodin a day. He additionally abused OxyContin and Xanax. The actor estimates he is spent $9 million getting sober — which he was lastly capable of do forward of the Associates reunion in April 2021.
MORE: Matthew Perry shares dependancy story in new memoir: ‘I am grateful to be alive’
