Matthew Perry had emergency surgery days before the Friends reunion

Matthew Perry revealed he had to undergo “emergency dental surgery” days before filming the “Friends” reunion last April.

“They did all kinds of things,” 53-year-old actor Diane Sawyer said during a session aired on ABC’s Nightline on Friday, adding that the procedure “was performed [his] Mouth feels like fire.”

At the time, Perry’s slurred speech and thousand-yard stare worried for his well-being.

“It sounded like my voice was off,” he admitted, but he knew he “couldn’t not show up.”

“So I decided to just go and do the best I could,” he told the longtime interviewer, who noted the “wear and tear on his voice and speech.”

Perry recently announced that he had been clean of all substances for the past 18 months, meaning he was freshly sober at the time the highly-anticipated reunion aired in May 2021.

The Whole Nine Yards star spoke to Sawyer ahead of the November 1 release of his tell-all novel, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, the content of which he has detailed in several recent interviews.

One of the many bombshells he discussed is the fact that his front teeth fell out while biting into peanut butter on toast, which is why he had to have them all replaced.

During his tearful interview with Sawyer, Perry detailed the time his “Friends” co-star Jennifer Aniston came to his trailer to intervene, saying the cast could smell alcohol on him.

He admitted there were times when his co-stars “needed to shore up [him] up” and that producers also confronted him about his addiction.

Perry told Sawyer, 76, that he has attended about 6,000 AA meetings, has been in therapy for 30 years, has spent half his life in treatment or in sober homes, and has been on detox about 65 times.

Earlier this month, the actor revealed that he was frighteningly “near death” in 2018 when his colon ruptured from opioid overuse.

At the time, Perry publicly claimed he had suffered a “gastrointestinal perforation,” but in reality he spent five months in the hospital – including two weeks in a coma – and had to use a colostomy bag for nine months.

“Doctors told my family I had a 2 percent chance of survival,” he told People in a story published Oct. 19 by Lung. And that’s called Ave Mary. Nobody survives that.”

Perry also told the outlet he was one of five people put on life support that night and that “the other four” didn’t make it.

The Emmy winner, who has been to rehab a total of 15 times, explained that the scars from his dozens of stomach surgeries are “a lot of reminders to stay sober.”

He added that his therapist also helped him overcome his addiction when they told him, “The next time you think about taking Oxycontin, just remember to have a colostomy bag for the rest of your life.”

The Fools Rush In star said the comment caused “a small window” to open and he “crawled through”.

Speaking to The New York Times shortly after his conversation with People, Perry estimated that he “spent $9 million or something getting sober.”

In the same interview, the actor reflected on how his decades-long and “exhausting” addiction to drugs and alcohol dominated his life at the peak of his long career on Friends.

At one point, Perry “woke up and had to get 55 Vicodin that day and figure out how to do it.”

“When you’re a drug addict, it’s all math,” he said. “I didn’t do it to feel high or to feel good… I just wanted to sit on my couch, take five Vicodin and watch a movie. That was heaven for me. It’s not anymore.”

He told the Times he started drinking beer and wine when he was 14, which evolved into a combination of vodka a quart, Vicodin, Xanax and OxyContin. He said he drew the line with heroin.

In his memoir, Perry writes that immediately after his “Friends” character Chandler Bing married Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) in the seventh season finale, which aired in 2001, he “was driven back to the treatment center in a pickup truck run by.” a sober technician.”

He admits fans of the show can actually tell what drugs he’s been on by tracking his “season-by-season weight.”

The actor also reveals he had to pull out of the 2021 film Don’t Look Up after his heart stopped for “five minutes” in the middle of back surgery because his anesthetics mixed up with the hydrocodone still in his system had combined the night before.

He writes that he is currently taking Suboxone – a drug used to treat opioid withdrawal – and will be taking it for the rest of his life.

Perry told GQ in an interview published Thursday that he doesn’t expect his “Friends” co-stars — with the exception of Lisa Kudrow, who wrote the foreword — to read his book because he believes only “addicts … and Fans of ‘Friends’ will care.