Matthew Perry Shared His Experience with Ketamine in 2022 Memoir: 'Like Being Hit in the Head with a Giant Happy Shovel'

Matthew Perry spoke about his experience with ketamine a year before his death.

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, the actor wrote about using ketamine therapy to treat his depression. Comparing its effects to “being hit in the head with a giant lucky shovel,” Perry said he enjoyed the drug.

“[It] it has my name written all over it — they could have called him ‘Matty,'” he wrote, later adding, “Ketamine was like a giant exhalation. They would take me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me to listen to music, blindfold me and give me an intravenous injection.”

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Perry said the infusion contained both Ativan and ketamine and that he would lie down for an hour while receiving the drip.

“I would separate, see things – I was in therapy for so long that it didn’t even freak me out. Oh, there’s a horse? Well – it could be,” he wrote in the book. “As the music played and the K passed through me, everything revolved around the ego and the death of the ego.”

Matthew Perry.

Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic

“I often thought I was dying during that hour. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is what happens when you die,’ he continued. “And yet I would keep signing up for this s— because it was something different, and anything different is good.”

Although he likes its effects, Perry explained that he decided “ketamine wasn’t for me.” “The hangover was hard,” he wrote, adding that he felt “like a fucking pincushion.”

A year later, Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine” and subsequent drowning

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According to the documents, Friends star woke up on October 28, 2023 and asked his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, to inject him with ketamine, which is known for its anesthetic and dissociative effects. On the same day, he asked for a second dose, and then a third, which eventually killed him.

Five people have been charged in connection with Perry’s death, including two doctors — Mark Chavez and Salvador Plasencia — who prosecutors said in their filing found out Perry wanted the drug in September 2023 and sold him injectable doses.

“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia allegedly wrote to Chavez, according to court documents. Prosecutors allege that Chavez obtained ketamine with a fake prescription and sold it to Plasencia.

Matthew Perry.

David M. Bennett/Dave Bennett/Getty

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Jasveen Sangha, also known as the “Ketamine Queen,” allegedly also supplied Perry with ketamine by having Hollywood director Erik Fleming transport it to Perry’s home in Pacific Palisades in exchange for cash from Iwamasa, according to prosecutors’ court documents. She allegedly sold him the dose he took on the day of his death, according to the same filing.

“Ultimately, these defendants were more interested in Mr. Perry’s profit than his well-being,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said when the charges were announced.

In Perry’s PEOPLE 2022 cover story, he opened up about his addiction and revealed that he no longer uses.

“I wanted to share when I was safe from going to the dark side again,” he said at the time. “I had to wait until I was fairly sober – and far from the active disease of alcoholism and addiction – to write it all down. I was pretty sure it would help people if I did.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, contact the SAMHSA Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.

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Source: HIS Education