Climbing into his backyard jacuzzi that overlooked the Santa Monica Mountains, Matthew Perry uttered the seven words that would ultimately lead to his death: “Shoot me up with a big one.”
The big one, court documents would later reveal, was a dose of ketamine, a prescription anaesthetic and a hallucinogen that has become popular for its off-label uses to treat depression and anxiety. It was the actor’s third injection of the day.
Hours after that fatal dose, the “Friends” actor was found face down in the jacuzzi. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene with a coroner finding ketamine was his primary cause of death.
The details about Perry’s last day alive on 28 October 2023 were revealed in court documents following a police probe that ultimately led to five people being charged in relation to his death.
The documents offer an in-depth look by the law enforcement agencies into his drug addiction, which he struggled with for decades, and a glimpse into Hollywood’s ketamine drug network. Doctors and experts told the BBC the growth in ketamine’s popularity in recent years has caused the market to explode, with the expansion of ketamine clinics and online services offering easy prescription access to the drug, as well as a burgeoning illicit drug market.
“It’s super easy [to get], – be it underground or prescription,” Dr David Mahjoubi, who serves as president of the American Board of Ketamine Physicians, told the BBC. “I have celebrities that are getting a prescription from me. It’s super easy, not hard at all.”
Federal authorities said their investigation into Perry’s death uncovered a “broad underground criminal network” of drug suppliers who distributed large quantities of ketamine across Los Angeles.
Federal court documents detail Perry’s last months alive and the transition from his treatments at a ketamine clinic for depression and anxiety, where a physician administered the drug and monitored for side effects, to an addiction that led him to “unscrupulous doctors” and a network of street dealers.
Perry had been open about his addiction problems, which stem back decades – even to his time playing Chandler Bing on “Friends”. If a drug entered his life, he seemed to become addicted.
But in his memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, he said he’d finally got sober, and one woman told investigators at the coroner’s office that she believed he’d been sober for 19 months.
Somewhere in that time, he started receiving ketamine infusion therapy. Experts say Perry’s history of addiction helped lead him to quickly become hooked on the drug. The federal investigation found that over a nearly two-month span before his death, Perry purchased dozens of vials of ketamine for thousands of dollars. Over the three days before his death, his assistant injected him at least six times a day with ketamine shots.
