‘Multiple people’ face charges over star’s drug death
MULTIPLE people could be charged in connection to Friends star Matthew Perry’s death, it was revealed yesterday.
A joint probe by the Los Angeles Police Department, the US Postal Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration has found several individuals linked to substances supplied to the actor, it was said.
Charges are expected to be filed imminently.
The actor, 54, took delivery of ketamine and possibly other drugs in the days before his death on October 28 last year, it was said.
Matthew, who was found in a hot tub at his home in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, also received narcotics from associates he met online, it was claimed.
Initial reports indicated he had drowned, but a toxicology report confirmed he died from acute effects of ketamine. His manner of death was ruled accidental.
Drowning, coronary artery disease and buprenorphine effects were also listed as contributing factors. According to his autopsy report, he had 3.54 micrograms per millilitre of ketamine in his bloodstream at the time of his death. Expert Dr Philip Wolfson said the star had levels of the drug in his system not compatible with life.
He added: “He really did himself in. He must have taken a large amount. “You don’t do this and go swimming or go into a pool of any sort.” Matthew, who played Chandler Bing in the hit show Friends, discussed his decadeslong battle with addiction in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
He revealed in the book that he received ketamine infusions while in a Swiss rehab clinic during the pandemic.
The star wrote: “Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s.
“There is a synthetic form of it now, and it’s used for two reasons – to ease pain and help with depression. Has my name written all over it – they might as well have called it Matty.”
He described the drug as a “giant exhale” and explained he would “disassociate” during his infusions and often felt as if he was “dying”.
He said in the book: “I thought, ‘Oh, 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.”
Matthew’s autopsy revealed he received his last ketamine treatment a week and a half before his death.