Matthew Perry Nearly Died on 'Don't Look Up' Set After THIS Happened
Matthew Perry shared another near-death experience he faced that made him exit the Netflix movie, "Don't Look Up."
In the past weeks, Perry has been open about his years-long battle with addiction and how it almost made him lose his life. Most recently, an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing," disclosed how one of the incidents happened while filming the 2021 movie, "Don't Look Up."
In the excerpt shared by The Rolling Stone, the "Friends" actor said he spent time at a rehab center in Switzerland while filming.
According to Perry, he lied to his doctors when he had stomach pain. He reportedly faked the severity of the condition to obtain hydrocodone, a narcotic analgesic. They urged him to undergo surgery, where he received the anesthesia drug, Propofol.
Since he took hydrocodone the night before, the combination led his body to stop his heart.
"I was given the shot at 11:00 a.m. I woke up eleven hours later in a different hospital. Apparently, the Propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes. It wasn't a heart attack-I didn't flatline-but nothing had been beating," he said in the memoir.
The actor added that a medical staff said he did not want the "guy from Friends" dying on his table. Thus, he performed CPR on Perry for five minutes.
With that, Perry asked whether "Friends" saved him as the doctor probably would have stopped at three minutes.
Although the doctor saved his life, he noted that he also broke eight of his ribs.
Following the incident, he had to exit the film due to too much pain.
But "Friends" Made His Addiction Worse
Although he credited the hit series as the one that saved him, he told PEOPLE that the show led to alcohol addiction.
Perry was 24 when he started filming the series. But when he turned 34, the actor reportedly reached the lowest point in his addiction battle and weighed only 128 pounds. At that time, he started taking 55 Vicodin per day.
He did not disclose when exactly he became sober, but he told the outlet he knew everything and learned a lot from it.
To help himself stay sober, Perry always looks at the 14 surgery scars on his stomach. These also make him feel stronger "in every way."
