Matthew Perry’s fatal dose of ketamine is the subject of a criminal investigation

Matthew Perry’s death due to the acute effects of the prescription drug ketamine is a cause for criminal investigation. Authorities are investigating where the actor got the drug, LAPD officials told The Times.

Perry was found dead in the hot tub of his swimming pool at his Pacific Palisades home on Oct. 28. According to the Los Angeles County coroner, traces of ketamine, sometimes used to treat depression, were found in Perry’s stomach. However, his autopsy revealed that the level found in his blood was approximately equivalent to the amount that would be used during general anesthesia.

How Perry came to consume so much ketamine is now the subject of an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration with assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department, Capt. Scot Williams told the Times on Tuesday. TMZ first reported the investigation.

The ketamine in Perry’s body caused hyperstimulation of the cardiovascular system and respiratory depression, the medical examiner reported. Other factors contributing to the actor’s death included drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid use disorder.

The actor was best known for playing the sarcastic and witty Chandler Bing on the NBC series “Friends” for ten seasons from 1994 to 2004. In his 2022 memoir, Perry said he began abusing drugs at age 14 and landed the role in “Friends” a decade later. Fame increased his addiction to alcohol and drugs. At some point, he writes in his book, he was taking almost five dozen tablets every day.

According to the coroner, Perry was undergoing ketamine infusion therapy every other day for a time but had tapered off his intake, and his last known infusion occurred a week and a half before his death.

The coroner said the ketamine found in Perry’s body at the time of his death could not have come from that earlier infusion because it typically disappears in detectable amounts three to four hours after ingestion.

According to his autopsy report, Perry had been playing pickleball around 11 a.m. that morning, and his live-in assistant last saw him at 1:37 p.m

When he returned to Perry’s home on Blue Sail Drive, the assistant found him floating face down in his swimming pool. The assistant jumped in, pulled Perry’s head out of the water and called 911.

Paramedics arrived and took Perry to the grass, where he was pronounced dead.

Ketamine is a legal drug that is often used as an anesthetic. In private clinics it is increasingly being offered “off label” to treat depression and other mental disorders, says Dr. David Goodman-Meza, an addiction medicine and infectious disease specialist at UCLA.

Some people also snort or inject it recreationally to experience euphoric or “dissociative” effects, which make someone feel disconnected from their own body, Goodman-Meza told The Times in December. In very high doses, it can make people feel immobile and trigger hallucinations, an experience called a “K-hole.”

The drug can make breathing difficult and increase the strain on the heart. If someone already has coronary artery disease and takes high doses of ketamine, “that could speed up your heart rate and create a higher demand, but then your arteries are unable to meet that demand,” the doctor explained.

The autopsy report determined Perry had no other drugs in his system and was 19 months sober at the time of his death. There was no evidence of illegal drugs or paraphernalia in his home.

The coroner also found that Perry, 54, had diabetes and suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which refers to a group of diseases that cause blockage of airflow and breathing problems. He once had a habit of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

A coroner interviewed a person close to Perry who described him as “in good spirits” and said he had quit smoking two weeks before his death and was in the process of coming off ketamine.

In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that an intravenous dose of ketamine has a rapid antidepressant effect. About 300 clinical trials have been conducted, which have broadly concluded that ketamine works extremely quickly compared to traditional antidepressants and can relieve depression over a period of days or weeks.

Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.