Matthew Perry - 'They saw him as a payday'

MULTIPLE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH THE STAR'S KETAMINE DEATH, ACCUSED OF 'TAKING ADVANTAGE OF HIS ADDICTION'

- Jennie Noonan

Before his death in October 2023, Matthew Perry had been upfront about his decades-long struggles with drugs and alcohol. He spoke about how he had come close to death several times and how he tried 15 different rehabs and spent upward of $13 million trying to beat his disease.

"Addiction has ruined so much of my life it's not funny. It's ruined relationships. It's ruined the day-to-day process of being me," the actor wrote in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. "It is very odd to live in a world where if you died, it would shock people but surprise no-one."

Almost exactly a year after those words were published, the beloved actor was found face down in the heated end of a pool at his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023, aged 54. Perry, whose previous vices included alcohol and a Vicodin habit that saw him taking 55 pills a day at the peak of his Friends fame, had been undergoing supervised ketamine therapy to treat his mental health, but when an autopsy found levels of the drug in his blood comparable to general anaesthesia used during surgery, a criminal investigation was launched to trace the line of supply.

"Matthew Perry's journey began with unscrupulous doctors who abused their position of trust because they saw him as a payday, and it ended with street dealers who sold him ketamine in unmarked vials," Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) head Anne Milgram alleged at an August 15 press briefing.