At least one arrest has been made in connection with Matthew Perry’s death, several outlets have reported.
TMZ was first to report the news on Thursday, August 15. The publication revealed that “at least one doctor” was put in police custody along with others who supplied Perry with the ketamine that ultimately caused his death on October 28, 2023. ABC reports that federal charges are expected to be announced this afternoon. There was no foul play discovered.
Perry died at age 54 after being found unresponsive in a hot tub at his California home. Two months later, Us obtained a report from the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office confirming that Perry died from “the acute effects of ketamine.” The toxicology report, also released in December 2023, listed coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine (which is used to treat addiction) as contributing factors. His death has been ruled an accident.
While the initial investigation into the Friends star’s death was closed in January, TMZ reported in May that law enforcement officials had continued to look into where he sourced the ketamine. Both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration were investigating, the outlet reported.
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Prior to his death, Perry discussed using ketamine treatments for his ongoing addiction struggles.
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s. There is a synthetic form of it now,” the actor wrote in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Perry said he would “disassociate” to get the treatment.
In Perry’s case, the treatments were used “to ease pain and help with depression,” he wrote.
“Has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty,’” he wrote of the drug. “It was something different, and anything different is good.”
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In the end, Perry said “ketamine was not for me.” He explained: “Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel.”
Throughout his memoir, Perry detailed his addiction struggles at length. At one point, the actor revealed that he was “completely sober” for only one full season of Friends. (He played Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom from 1994 to 2004.)
“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills,” he wrote, noting that season 9 was when he had gotten sober. “When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills.”
