Matthew Perry's medical history: addiction, rehab, operations

Months after Matthew Perry's death at the age of 54, more details are emerging about his fatal ketamine overdose.

The “Friends” star had undergone ketamine therapy to treat his depression and anxiety before his death in October 2023. But the doses of the drug administered as part of the therapy were not the cause of his death, NBC News reported. He also consumed the drug unsupervised and became addicted, prosecutors said.

Five people have been charged in connection with Perry's death, including his personal assistant, two doctors and a drug dealer. Ketamine is a popular party drug that has psychedelic effects and is used medically as an anesthetic.

Perry has been open about his health over the years, including his battle with addiction and related health issues. Here's what we know about Perry's health history before his ketamine overdose and death.

Cause of death of Matthew Perry

According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office, Perry's cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine.

“Contributing factors to Mr. Perry's death include drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine (a medication used to treat opioid addiction). The cause of death was accidental,” the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office said in a statement.

According to the coroner, the amount of ketamine in his body was equivalent to the amount used in general anesthesia before surgery.

The actor was found apparently drowned in his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023. Two police officials told NBC News there were no signs of foul play.

Matthew Perry's health story

Perry has long struggled with addiction, which he has spoken about in previous interviews and extensively in his book, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.

He has been battling his addiction for three decades

In an October 2022 interview with People, Perry discussed his three-decade-long battle with addiction.

His battle with alcohol addiction began just as the ten seasons of Friends began. He told the newspaper that he had his addiction under control at first. He explained: “I could sort of deal with it, but by the time I was 34, I was really in big trouble.”

Perry recalled a time when he weighed just 120 pounds and took more than 50 Vicodin a day. During his battle with addiction, he was in and out of rehab more than a dozen times and underwent at least 14 surgeries.

“The doctors told my family I had a two percent chance of survival,” he said. “At that point, I was really close to dying.”

He was in rehab more than a dozen times

Perry has spent decades trying to get sober, which has proven costly for the actor. In his memoir, he wrote that he spent more than $7 million on his journey to sobriety, including 15 rehabs. However, in an interview with The New York Times, he said the total was closer to $9 million.

“I was in a mental institution, attending therapy twice a week for thirty years, and was on the verge of death,” he wrote in his memoirs.

In his book, he also recalled one of his stays in rehab when Friends was still in production. During Chandler and Monica's wedding, he was living in rehab and was brought to the set by a technician to film the scene.

“I married Monica and was driven back to the treatment center in a pickup truck driven by a sober technician – at the height of my success on 'Friends,' the pinnacle of my career, the iconic moment of the iconic show,” he wrote.

Perry also recalled how he felt while filming the final scene of “Friends.”

“It was January 23, 2004. The keys were on the counter, a guy who looked a lot like Chandler Bing said, 'Where?'” he wrote. “'Embryonic Journey' by Jefferson Airplane was playing, the camera panned to the back of the apartment door, then Ben, our first AD and very close friend, yelled for the last time, 'That's it,' and tears shot like geysers from nearly everyone's eyes.”

Perry recalled Jennifer Aniston “sobbling” and said even Matt LeBlanc cried. However, he said he “didn't feel anything,” adding, “I couldn't tell if it was the opioid buprenorphine I was taking or if I was just dead inside.”

He was in a coma after his colon burst in 2019

In his book, Perry wrote about a near-death experience in 2019 that was due to a colon rupture caused by opioid overuse.

Perry underwent seven hours of emergency surgery at the hospital and was given a two percent chance of surviving the night. In his book, he wrote, “I will have to live the rest of my life knowing that my mother and others heard those words.”

After the operation, he fell into a coma for two weeks and then spent five months in hospital, using a colostomy bag for nine months.

“I realized that my greatest fear had come true: that I had done this to myself,” he wrote.

His heart stopped for 5 minutes

Perry wrote about another near-death experience in his book, recalling the time he was in a rehabilitation clinic in Switzerland and was awake all night taking hydrocodone before an operation. He was also treated with propofol, the drug that killed Michael Jackson and is normally used for anesthesia.

On the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in November 2022, he recalled the incident in detail, telling the show's host that he received cardiopulmonary resuscitation and that the man performing the procedure broke eight of his ribs.

Perry told Stephen Colbert that his “heart stopped for five minutes,” but that there was “no cardiac arrest.” Ten hours later, the actor woke up in another hospital.

The incident resulted in Perry not being able to appear in “Don't Look Up” alongside Meryl Streep. She told Colbert, “I had to give up the biggest movie I've ever made. I had four scenes with Streep.”

His therapist helped him with his addiction

In his book, he not only described his decades-long struggle with addiction, but also how his therapist helped him get off drugs.

He said his therapist told him that taking medication would mean he would have to wear a colostomy bag “for the rest of his life.”

“I have had no interest in taking drugs since then,” he wrote, adding, “I have given up, but on the winning side, not the losing side. I am no longer stuck in a losing battle with drugs and alcohol. I no longer feel the need to automatically light a cigarette when I drink my morning coffee.”

He used ketamine therapy before his death

Perry also wrote in his memoirs that he used ketamine therapy to “relieve pain and treat depression.”

“Ketamine felt like a giant exhale,” he wrote. “They took me into a room, sat me down, put headphones on so I could listen to music, put a blindfold on me, and put an IV in me.”

“As I was laying there in the darkness listening to Bon Iver, I was opening up, seeing things – I'd been in therapy for so long that it didn't even faze me. Oh, there's a horse over there? OK – that could be… When the music played and K ran through me, it was all about the ego and the death of the ego.”

Some research shows that ketamine therapy may be an effective short-term treatment for depression that would otherwise have been treatment-resistant.