ALWAYS A CONTRADICTION –
Dec. 16, 2023 – 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.”
