Matthew Perry detailed his obvious discomfort with ketamine in his 2022 memoir – a undeniable fact that has resurfaced following a toxicology report which revealed his explanation for death to be “the acute effects of ketamine.”
In Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing, the Friends star revealed he had undergone ketamine infusion remedy whereas at a rehab facility in Switzerland, stories Entertainment Tonight. But whereas he saved going again to these periods, he said the after results had been “rough.”
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s,” wrote the five-time Emmy nominee, who was open about his lifelong battle with drug abuse and alcoholism. “There is a synthetic form of it now, and it’s used for two reasons: to ease pain and help with depression.”
Perry said “taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” however that ketamine infusions typically made him feel like he was “dying.”
“I assumed, ‘This is what happens when you die,’” he wrote. “Yet I would continually sign up for this s– because it was something different, and anything different is good.”
However, “the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel,” Perry continued, eventually concluding that “ketamine was not for me.”
The 54-year-old actor was found floating face down in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home on Oct 28, after first responders answered a call for cardiac arrest.
His toxicology report, released on Dec 15, ultimately determined that Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” with contributing factors including drowning, coronary artery disease, and the effects of buprenorphine – a drug used to help addicts ween themselves off opioids. His death was ruled an accident.
Leading up to his passing, Perry had reportedly been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat anxiety and depression. However, the medical examiner ruled that the amount found in Perry’s system couldn’t have been from that therapy, as his last-known session had been per week and a half earlier than his death.
The ketamine present in his physique “could not be from that infusion therapy, since ketamine’s half-life is three to four hours, or less,” the report said. The health worker couldn’t decide the strategy during which Perry took the ketamine that induced deadly “cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression.”
Perry had reportedly been sober for 19 months prior to his death.
The health worker discovered no proof of alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl or PCP in his system. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
