The Los Angeles Police Department and Drug Enforcement Administration have launched a joint criminal investigation over the death of Friends actor Matthew Perry.
The actor and comedian, who played Chandler Bing on the hit sitcom, died aged 54 on October 28, 2023 from drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine and ketamine.
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Law enforcement sources confirmed the investigation on Tuesday to the Los Angeles Times.
The autopsy report, released in December by the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office, found Perry had died from the “acute effects of ketamine”.
He was found floating face-down in the pool of his Pacific Palisades home and his death was ruled as an accident.
“At the high levels of ketamine found in his post-mortem blood specimens, the main lethal effects would be from both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the report stated.
The examiner’s report also noted Perry was heavily reliant on over-the-counter medication.
“In the assistant’s bedroom there were multiple open, empty, half-filled medication bottles prescribed to the decedent, as well as over-the-counter medications, vitamins, digestive aids and dishes filled with multiple various loose pills, tablets, caplets, candy and breath mints,” the report read.
In Perry’s bathroom there were “prescribed ointments, digestive aids and oral rinses,” the report added.
Now the LAPD and Drug Enforcement Administration are investigating how Perry obtained such extreme levels of ketamine.
They are primarily determining who provided the drug to the actor and why.
According to the medical examiner in the report, Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy every other day for a period of time.
Leading up to his death, he had reduced his intake and his final infusion was believed to be a week and a half prior to his death.
It was deemed the ketamine discovered in his body could not be from the infusion, with detectable amounts disappearing about four hours after intake.
Aside from buprenorphine and ketamine, no other drugs were detected in his system and he was 19 months sober at the time of his death, as per The Los Angeles Times.
In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers And The Big Terrible Thing, Perry said he didn’t really like ketamine, which is often used in therapy to treat anxiety and depression.
“Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” he wrote.
“But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel.
“Ketamine was not for me.”
Perry was meant to have stopped his ketamine treatments, according to a note in the autopsy from his anaesthesiologist, because his “depression was fine”.
Ketamine is an anaesthetic used as a pain killer, sedative and sometimes to treat depression.
Buprenorphine, also found in his system, is a drug used to alleviate pain and help with addiction to opioids.
Perry had been candid about his addiction to opioids in his memoir.