Did Matthew Perry Grow Fond Of Ketamine Hallucinations? This Is What We Found In His Memoir

A year before his death, Matthew Perry detailed his ketamine experience in his 2022 memoir, ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’.

The late ‘Friends’ star, who used ketamine therapy to treat his depression, described the drug as feeling like ‘being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel.’

Perry recounted the process, noting, ‘Ketamine felt like a giant exhale. They’d bring me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me to listen to music, blindfold me, and insert an IV.’

The actor expressed his growing affinity for ketamine as he became familiar with its hallucinogenic effects.

‘It feels like it was made just for me — they might as well have named it ‘Matty,’’ he wrote, noting that he would often ‘disassociate’ and ‘see things.’

‘I’d been in therapy for so long that nothing startled me. Oh, there’s a horse over there? Fine — might as well be,’ he added.

‘As the music played and the ketamine worked its way through me, it all became about the ego and the dissolution of the ego,’ he wrote.

Perry revealed that doctors combined Ativan with ketamine during his hour-long therapy sessions.

‘I often thought I was dying during those sessions, thinking, ‘Oh, this is what dying feels like,’’ he wrote. Despite this, he continued with the therapy, valuing the novelty it offered.

Perry's death on October 28, 2023, was attributed to the acute effects of ketamine use, which led to drowning.

It was recently disclosed that his longtime assistant, Kenneth ‘Kenny’ Iwamasa, administered the fatal ketamine dose.

Iwamasa admitted to injecting Perry multiple times without medical training and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death. He faces 15 years in prison.

Additionally, US Attorney Martin Estrada has charged five individuals, including two doctors, in connection with Perry's death following an investigation into an illicit drug trade in Hollywood.

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