Matthew Perry's Heart-Wrenching Quotes About Using Ketamine: What the Late Actor Wrote in His Memoir

Friends actor Matthew Perry was no stranger to the drug ketamine, and while substance abuse in Hollywood is a commonly shamed topic, Perry used his platform to advocate for those struggling with addiction. Before his unfortunate death at age 54, the actor was incredibly open and honest about undergoing a ketamine injection treatment to help fight his depression brought on by past drug and alcohol abuse.  

It has since been revealed in the ongoing investigation into his death  that the late actor was addicted to the drug, one of the contributing factors of his death .  

While details have emerged about the actor’s assistant and his role in administering the drug – as well as the dealer and doctors involved and charged in connection to Perry’s passing – the beloved Friends star himself , detailed his experience with the drug in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers and The Big Bad Terrible Thing. To learn exactly what he wrote, and the brave admissions he offered readers , keep scrolling.  

Matthew Perry’s quotes on using ketamine 

Perry was certainly not shy about detailing his difficult journey as an actor in his 2022 memoir. He talked about who he had dated, his time on Friends, his constant battle with addiction and even the time he almost died.  

Perry also touched on his thoughts about ketamine, which in recent years has turned into a big party drug instead of just maintenance for anesthesia.  

 “Ketamine felt like a giant exhale,” wrote Perry. “They’d bring me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me so I would listen to music, blindfold me, and put an IV in.” 

The IV also contained Ativan — commonly referred to as Lorazepam — which is used to treat seizures and pre-surgery anxiety.  

These two together caused Perry to hallucinate often while he was receiving the IV treatment.  

“I would disassociate, see things — I’d been in therapy for so long that I wasn’t even freaked out by this. Oh, there’s a horse over there? Fine — it might as well be. As the music played and the K [Ketamine] ran through me, it all became about the ego, and the death of the ego,” the late actor wrote.   

It was not all fun and games, though, with Perry also revealing, “I often thought that I was dying during that hour. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is what happens when you die. Yet I would continually sign up for this s--- because it was something different, and anything different is good.” 

He summed up his entire ketamine experience by writing, “[It felt like] being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” and how he felt that, “[Ketamine] has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty.’”  

It still remains unclear when Perry became addicted to the drug and started using it recreationally, not just medically.  

Matthew Perry’s death 

Perry died on October 28, 2023, from acute effects of ketamine. He was found lying face down in the heated section of his Pacific Palisades home swimming pool.  

Recently the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has arrested five people in relation to his death: Dr. Mark Chavez, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, Perry’s assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, his acquaintance Erik Fleming and a drug dealer known as “The Ketamine Queen.” Her real name is Jasveen Sangha.  

On the day of his death, authorities detailed that Perry asked Iwamasa to, “Shoot me up with a big one,” in reference to ketamine and turn on the hot tub. Iwamasa injected Perry and then left the house – when he returned, Perry was dead.  

All five of these people involved in the late actor's deaths have been arrested and charged. 

For more of our Matthew Perry content, keep scrolling! 

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