A year before he was found dead, Matthew Perry detailed his experience with ketamine in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.”
The late “Friends” star, who underwent ketamine therapy to treat his depression, described the anesthesia in his book, saying the drug felt like “being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel.”
“Ketamine was like a giant exhale. They would take me into a room, sit me down, put headphones in me to listen to music, blindfold me, and put me on an IV,” Perry wrote.
The actor recalls being a fan of ketamine as he grew accustomed to its hallucinogenic effects.
“My name is on it – they might as well have called it ‘Matty,’” he wrote, adding that he often “dissociates” and “sees things.”
“I’d been in therapy for so long that it didn’t even scare me. Oh, there’s a horse over there? Fine, might as well be,” he continued.
“As the music played and the K flowed through me, it all became about ego and ego death.”
Perry explained that doctors would use a combination of Ativan (an anti-anxiety medication) and ketamine during his hour-long therapy sessions.
“I often thought I was dying at that hour. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is what happens when you die,'” he wrote.
“Yet I kept signing up for this program because it was something different, and different is good.”
Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine use” that led to his drowning on October 28, 2023.
It was revealed last week that Perry’s longtime assistant, Kenneth “Kenny” Iwamasa, was the person who administered the fatal dose of ketamine that killed him.
Iwamasa “admitted to repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training” and administering “multiple injections” on the day Perry died, according to the Justice Department.
On August 7, the former aide pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
Perry was reportedly “in a spiral of uncontrollable addiction” before his death, despite his previous claims that he had been sober for years.
U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada charged five peopleincluding two doctors, with Perry’s death after uncovering an illegal drug deal in Hollywood.
