Friends star Matthew Perry died of ketamine overdose, autopsy finds
Al Jazeera
Los Angeles medical examiner says drowning and heart disease were contributing factors in actor’s accidental death.
Friends actor Matthew Perry, who was found dead in a jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home in October, died from an accidental ketamine overdose, an autopsy has found.
Perry, who played the wise-cracking Chandler Bing in the popular US sitcom, passed away from the “acute effects” of the sedative, with drowning a secondary cause in his October 28 death at age 54, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said on Friday.
Heart disease and “the effects of buprenorphine”, a drug used to treat opioid abuse, were also contributing factors, the autopsy report said.
Perry, who spoke openly about his struggles with alcohol and opiate addiction, had reportedly been undergoing ketamine treatment for anxiety and depression but took his last known infusion more than a week before his death, which would have been long enough for the drug to have left his system.
“The exact method of intake in Mr Perry’s case is unknown,” the report said.
