Throughout his life, the actor battled alcohol and drug addiction. He detailed his struggles in his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, released November 2022, noting he had spent over $7 million trying to get sober—and succeeded.
Also in his book, Perry recalled undergoing a near-death experience in 2018. He said that while saying in a sober living home, his colon “exploded” from years of opioid overuse and that he ended up spending two weeks in a coma and five months in a hospital. He underwent more than a dozen surgeries. He said his loved ones were told, “Matthew has a two percent chance of making it through the night,” writing, “I will have to live out the rest of my days knowing that my mother and others heard those words.”
after its release, Perry’s memoir ranked No. 1 on the New York Times‘ bestsellers list. “People have just loved it,” the actor later told E! News during the GQ Men of the Year event. “I shied away from nothing and I told the truth and the biggest thing was, the goal was, to help people and I know of a lot of people already who have been helped by it.”
(E! News and NBC News are part of the NBCUniversal family.)
