Matthew Perry’s Death Shines a Harsh Light on Ketamine Treatment

Was Mr. Perry, whose struggles with substance abuse were widely known, a good candidate for a drug used to relieve depression? Doctors say his case raises thorny questions.

The actor Matthew Perry, who had long struggled with addiction, grew intrigued by ketamine a few years ago during a stay at a rehab facility in Switzerland where he received daily infusions of the powerful anesthetic “to ease pain and help with depression.”

“Has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty,’” he later wrote of ketamine, which is known for its dissociative properties, in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.” It felt, he said, “like a giant exhale.”

“As the music played and the K ran through me, it all became about the ego, and the death of the ego,” he wrote. “And I often thought that I was dying during that hour. Oh, I thought, this is what happens when you die.” As much as he was drawn to it, he wrote, he found the hangover unpleasant and ultimately decided that “ketamine was not for me.”

But he eventually returned to the drug, getting ketamine treatments from doctors at clinics and then, as he grew addicted to it, buying it from illicit sources and getting multiple injections each day at his Los Angeles home, the authorities have said. On Oct. 28, after he received several shots from his personal assistant, he did die — face down in his hot tub. An autopsy determined that Mr. Perry had died from “the acute effects of ketamine,” with drowning one of several contributing factors.

“Matthew Perry sought treatment for depression and anxiety and went to a local clinic where he became addicted to intravenous ketamine,” Anne Milgram, the head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said at a news conference last week. “When clinic doctors refused to increase his dosage, he turned to unscrupulous doctors who saw Perry as a way to make quick money.”