'I'm grateful to be alive': Actor Matthew Perry of 'Friends' fame says his family was informed that he 'had a 2 percent chance to live'

Actor Matthew Perry, who is widely known for his role playing Chandler Bing on the popular television series "Friends," has come close to death and says that he is thankful to be alive.

The celebrity's memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing," is slated for release on November 1.

"I wanted to share when I was safe from going into the dark side of everything again," Perry told People. "I had to wait until I was pretty safely sober — and away from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction — to write it all down. And the main thing was, I was pretty certain that it would help people."

The outlet reported that his memoir discloses that he nearly died several years ago.

He openly admitted at that time that he had a gastrointestinal perforation, according to People. But the outlet noted that the celebrity had actually battled for his life following his colon busting due to opioid overuse — he was in a coma for a couple of weeks, hospitalized for five months, and for nine months utilized a colostomy bag.

At the point of hospitalization, "the doctors told my family that I had a 2 percent chance to live," Perry said. "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."

There was a time when he was on "Friends" that the actor was taking 55 Vicodin per day and weighed just 128 pounds. "I didn't know how to stop," he noted. "If the police came over to my house and said, 'If you drink tonight, we're going to take you to jail,' I'd start packing. I couldn't stop because the disease and the addiction is progressive. So it gets worse and worse as you grow older."

Perry has undergone a whopping 14 stomach surgeries. "That's a lot of reminders to stay sober," he noted. "All I have to do is look down."

"My therapist said, 'The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life,'" he said. "And a little window opened and I crawled through it and I no longer want Oxycontin anymore."

Perry believes readers of his memoir will be "be surprised at how bad it got at certain times and how close to dying I came."

"I'm an extremely grateful guy. I'm grateful to be alive, that's for sure. And that gives me the possibility to do anything," Perry said.