Matthew Perry death: LAPD, DEA investigating source of ketamine that led to actor’s death

Officials are trying to find out where “Friends” actor Matthew Perry got the ketamine that ended up killing him.

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TMZ was the first to report that the Los Angeles Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration are investigating who supplied Perry with the drug and why.

The investigation has been going on for months, but the gossip site didn’t say exactly when it started.

It was confirmed by the LAPD to “Good Morning America” and other media outlets. The DEA had no comment, according to GMA.

Perry was found unresponsive in his hot tub at his home in Pacific Palisades on Oct. 28, 2023. He had suffered a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at the scene. At first, it was thought he had drowned, but the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office said he died from acute effects of ketamine. While he had been receiving ketamine infusions for depression and anxiety, it wasn’t the ketamine that was found in his system, officials said. The drug has a half-life of three to four hours, according to KNBC.

Typically ketamine is used as an anesthetic, The Los Angeles Times reported, but it can be used in other “off-label” treatments.

Perry’s death was ruled an accident.

The actor had used drugs in the past but said he had been clean for 19 months. No other drugs were found in his system, the Times reported. He even talked about his addictions while being on the hit television show “Friends,” KNBC reported.

He also wrote about the use of ketamine therapy in his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” writing, “Taking K is like being hit in the head by a giant happy shovel,” adding, “but the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel. Ketamine is not for me.”

Perry also, according to the medical examiner, had diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.

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