Friends star Matthew Perry, who died in October from the “acute effects of ketamine,” wrote in his 2022 memoir that the drug made him feel like he was “dying” and that it “was not for me.”
Weeks after the 54-year-old actor was found floating face down in his jacuzzi, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office released an autopsy report on Friday that found that his use of ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic that’s also used in the treatment of depression, was the primary factor in his death.
Shortly after the autopsy was released, portions of Perry’s book Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, in which he denounces ketamine and the effects it had on him, resurfaced online.
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s. There is a synthetic form of it now, and it’s used for two reasons: to ease pain and help with depression,” he wrote. “Has my name written all over it—they might as well have called it ‘Matty.’”
Explaining that he began receiving ketamine infusions at a Swiss rehab clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic, Perry said that he would “dissociate” during these sessions and eventually felt like he was “dying.”
Noting that he was given the anesthetic while blindfolded and listening to music, Perry described it as a “giant exhale” but stated that the experience was something he disliked.
“‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘This is what happens when you die,’” he said. “Yet I would continually sign up for this shit because it was something different, and anything different is good.”
In the end, Perry recalled that “ketamine is not for me” because “taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” adding that the “hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel.”
Despite his previous denouncement of ketamine, the coroner’s report revealed that Perry had continued to get infusions of the drug to treat depression and anxiety following his stay at the Swiss clinic. The toxicology results, however, noted that the ketamine found in his body “could not be from that infusion therapy” as the drug’s half-life is four hours.
“At the high levels of ketamine found in his postmortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the report stated.
While the comedic star had long struggled with addiction throughout his career, it had been reported that he’d been clean and sober for over a year and a half at the time of his death. In fact, just before he was found dead, he had played a long session of pickleball with friends.
