Before His Death, Matthew Perry Had Plans to Open a Foundation for Substance Abuse Treatment to Help Those Struggling

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published 31 October 2023

Before his death on Saturday, Matthew Perry had been open and candid about his struggles with substance abuse, which he battled for nearly a quarter century of his 54 years before becoming completely sober in May 2021. Multiple outlets report that, had he lived, Perry planned to start a foundation for substance abuse treatment to help those struggling with drug and alcohol dependency.

People reports that, even after his death, Perry’s friends and loved ones still hope to turn his dream into a reality. Perry had already done his part to help out, founding a men’s sober living facility called Perry House, which ran from 2013 to 2015 in his old Malibu beach home. “The interesting reason that I can be so helpful to people now is that I screwed up so often,” he said. “It’s nice for people to see that somebody who once struggled in their life is not struggling anymore.”

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry revealed that he had been in and out of rehab 15 times, and, following a jet ski accident in 1997, became addicted to Vicodin, at one point taking up to 55 pills daily. He also, per Page Six, opened up that he had spent nearly $10 million attempting to get sober over the years.

When he was 49, he had a near-death experience when his colon burst from opioid overuse; at the time, he spent two weeks in a coma and five months in the hospital. “The doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live,” he said last year. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”

He further explained he was one of five people hooked up to life support that night—and that the others didn’t survive. “My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life,’ and a little window opened, and I crawled through it, and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore,” he said.

Perry died Saturday of an apparent drowning at his L.A. home.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.

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