Los Angeles authorities revealed Friday that Matthew Perry died from “the acute effects of ketamine,” with an autopsy report suggesting that the Friends actor wasn’t just taking the drug—nicknamed Special K—to treat anxiety and depression, but also recreationally.
Medical complications stemming from ketamine are occurring with higher frequency in recent years, especially as it’s become popular to produce compounded versions of the drug.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert on Oct. 11, less than three weeks before Perry’s death, that warned about compounded ketamine misuse and its fatal consequences. Experts told The New York Times the same week that a pandemic-related boom in telehealth calls allowed people to receive large amounts of ketamine through the mail, which was far easier than physically going to the doctor, as was widely the norm before 2020.
With ketamine flowing easily by mail, and with demand as high as ever, low-quality ketamine sellers began to flood the market and remain there in 2023, the Times reported.
“Our concern is that these online sellers are going to ruin it for everybody,” Peter Koshland, who runs a compounding pharmacy in San Francisco, told the Times. “Our fear is that regulators, if they perceive a threat to public health, will move to take this amazing medicine away and leave patients at risk.”
The FDA alert warned that, despite ketamine being a popular and effective drug to treat depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorders, it also can increase blood pressure, cause respiratory depression, and create urinary tract issues that can lead to incontinence if not taken correctly.
When taken properly, however, Dr. Alexander Papp, a board-certified psychiatrist and voluntary clinical professor at UC San Diego, told USA Today that some patients attribute ketamine to giving them an improved outlook on life.
Recreationally, ketamine is a popular club drug that’s typically snorted and can be highly addictive. It’s a dissociative anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, and can be deadly if too much is consumed at a time, according to the American Addiction Center.
The center adds, however, that ketamine overdoses are rare unless the drug is being consumed with other drugs at the same time or in short succession.
In the case of Perry, who long battled with addiction, his autopsy report listed buprenorphine—a drug taken to treat pain and opioid addiction—as a contributing factor, suggesting its presence in Perry’s body could have had an adverse affect alongside the ketamine.
Other contributing factors listed on Perry’s autopsy report were drowning (he was found face down in his jacuzzi) and coronary artery disease.
