Matthew Perry says Friends ‘might have saved his life’ as his heart stopped for five minutes
Matthew Perry has recalled the terrifying moment his heart stopped beating for five minutes and said his time in the hit-show Friends might be what kept him alive.
The Friends star, 53, said he was left with eight broken ribs as Swiss doctors desperately attempted to save his life after a mix of medications stopped his heart. He described the terrifying experience in his memoir, Friends, Lover and the Big Terrible Thing.
Matthew was set to star in Adam McKay's hit Netflix film Don't Look Up, but was forced to pull out due to the medical emergency.
According to Rolling Stone, Matthew was supposed to play a Republican journalist in the film, and had even shot a scene with Jonah Hill.
Matthew was in Switzerland in rehab at the time of filming to try to get sober, and had convinced his doctors to prescribe him with the pain-killing drug hydrocodone for a ''severe stomach pain''.
"In fact, I was okay," Matthew wrote in the memoir.
"It still felt like I was doing a constant sit-up, so it was very uncomfortable, but it wasn't pain."
Because of the pain, doctors wanted Matthew to undergo surgery to ''put some kind of weird medical device,'' as he described it, in his back to help with his discomfort. The night before his surgery, Matthew took his hydrocodone and right before the operation, the doctors administered propofol, an anaesthesia drug.
The combination of drugs proved fateful as it stopped his heart completely.
"I was given the shot at 11am. I woke up 11 hours later in a different hospital. Apparently the propofol had stopped my heart. For five minutes," Matthew said.
He added: "It wasn't a heart attack – I didn't flatline – but nothing had been beating.
"I was told that some beefy Swiss guy really didn't want the guy from Friends dying on his table and did CPR for the full five minutes, beating and pounding my chest."
After five minutes, his heart started beating again. But in the process of doing CPR, the doctors had broken eight of Matthew's ribs.
Matthew has since then wondered how much part him playing the role of Chandler has played in him surviving death that time.
"If I hadn't been on Friends, would he hadstopped at three minutes? Did Friends save my life again?" Matthew said.
The pain of the ribs is what forced Matthew to withdraw himself from the film. He describes the exit as ''heartbreaking'' as he had described the film opportunity as ''the biggest movie he'd ever gotten''.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Matthew revealed that he has spent close to $9 million to try to get sober.
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