Matthew Perry’s autopsy lists ‘acute effects of ketamine’ as cause of death
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Matthew Perry, known for his role as Chandler Bing in the sitcom “Friends,” was found face down and unresponsive in the pool of his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28 at approximately 4 p.m., the Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office announced Friday, noting that “acute effects of ketamine” was the main cause of Perry’s death.
Other contributing factors included “drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine (used to treat opioid use disorder),” according to the medical examiner’s report. It said that his death was accidental.
Before his death, Perry, 54, had been “receiving ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety,” per CNN.
The autopsy report also said that ketamine is medically used as an anesthetic “mainly due to its ‘dissociative’ nature, indicating disconnection of mind and body. It can also have short duration hallucinatory and psychedelic effects.”
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“Trace amounts of ketamine” were detected in Perry’s stomach, though the actor’s last ketamine infusion was a week and a half before his death, The Hill reported. Since ketamine’s half-life is between three to four hours, the ketamine in his system couldn’t have been from that infusion therapy session, the article said.
A former chief medical examiner for New York City, Dr. Michael Baden, told Fox News, “(Perry) has been in rehab a number of times for a number of different drugs. This wasn’t one of them that I am aware of.”
Baden continued, “He was very outspoken because he was trying to alert people to the hazards of drugs, and this wasn’t one of the drugs that he was abusing.”
The autopsy report said that “prescription medications and loose pills” were found in Perry’s home. However, investigators told The Associated Press, “Perry had not been sick, had not made any health complaints, and had not shown evidence of recent alcohol or drug use.”
Dr. Andrew Stolbach, a medical toxicologist at John Hopkins Medicine, said the ketamine “would be enough to make him lose consciousness and lose his posture and his ability to keep himself above the water,” per The Washington Post.
His friend and colleague Jennifer Aniston told Reese Witherspoon in an interview with Variety that she “was literally texting with him that morning, funny Matty.” She added that he was happy on the day of his death. “He was not in pain. He wasn’t struggling.”
