Matthew Perry said taking ketamine was like “being hit in the head” with a “giant happy shovel” a year before he was killed by the drug.
Matthew Perry said taking ketamine was like ‘being hit in the head’ with a ‘giant happy shovel’ a year before he was killed by the drug
The tormented ‘Friends’ actor – who shot to fame playing Chandler Bing on the NBC sitcom from 1994 to 2004 – was killed on 28 October, 2023, aged 54 from the “acute effects” of the anaesthetic after getting into the hot-tub of his $6million mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles while high on three doses of the substance, with five people now indicted over his passing.
An extract about the drug from Matthew’s 2022 memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’ – which dealt with his years of addiction – has resurfaced since their arrests.
In a section of the book in which the actor wrote about using ketamine therapy to treat his depression, he said its numbing effect was like “being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel”.
He added: “(It) has my name written all over it – they might as well have called it ‘Matty’.
“Ketamine felt like a giant exhale. They’d bring me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me so I would listen to music, blindfold me, and put an IV in.”
Matthew said the drip contained Ativan and ketamine, and he would lie down for an hour while it flowed into his bloodstream.
He went on: “I would disassociate, see things – I’d been in therapy for so long that I wasn’t even freaked out by this: ‘Oh, there’s a horse over there? Fine – might as well be’.
“As the music played and the K ran through me, it all became about the ego, and the death of the ego.
“I often thought that I was dying during that hour. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is what happens when you die’.
“Yet I would continually sign up for this s*** because it was something different, and anything different is good.”
Even though he was a fan of the drug’s effects – and despite him going on to take the drug after saying he was clean in promotional interviews for his book – Matthew insisted in his autobiography “ketamine was not for me”.
He added: “(The) hangover was rough… (I) felt like a f****** pin cushion.”
Tagged in Matthew Perry