The renowned actor Matthew Perry, famous for his role as Chandler Bing in the acclaimed series Friends, died last Saturday at the age of 54, according to various American media reports. The event occurred at his residence in Los Angeles, where he was found dead in a jacuzzi, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, citing police sources.
Authorities responded to the scene around 4:00 p.m. local time after receiving the call, finding Perry unconscious. The Los Angeles Police Department, in charge of the investigation, ruled out signs of criminal activity at the scene, as well as the presence of drugs, minimizing the possibilities that it was a violent event or an overdose.
Matthew Perry had to face serious health problems in recent years, although his worst period coincided with the recording of the series that catapulted him to stardom. He talked about all of them in his 2022 memoir titled Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
In the autobiographical book, Perry recounted that he nearly died at age 49 when his colon exploded due to opioid abuse. Although it was initially reported that he had suffered a "gastrointestinal perforation," the actor actually spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital. During that critical period, Perry had to wear a colostomy bag for nine months.
The doctors, seeing the severity of the actor's pathology, informed his family that the actor only had a 2% chance of surviving, which forced them to connect him to an ECMO machine that regulated his breathing and heart rate. This health episode led him to use a colostomy bag for nine months, this being the turning point that, according to him, prompted him to seek sobriety.
The actor also revealed a terrifying experience in November 2020, when during a stay in rehab, an adverse interaction between propofol and hydrocodone in his system caused his heart to stop for five minutes. Although doctors managed to revive him with CPR, Perry suffered eight broken ribs, which made it difficult for him to participate alongside Meryl Streep in the film Don't Look Up.
To these two specific episodes must be added several years of flirting with various drugs, something that always involves the risk of dying. The actor started drinking alcohol at age 14 and, after a jet ski accident while filming Only Fools Fall in Love, he became hooked on opiates.
In an interview with the New York Times, Perry estimated that he had spent about $9 million on his long road to sobriety.
