Arrests were made in Southern California on Thursday in connection with the drug overdose death of actor Matthew Perry, law enforcement officials told NBC News.
Perry, 54, was found face-down on the edge of a heated swimming pool at his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said his cause of death was acute exposure to the hallucinogenic anesthetic ketamine.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in May that it was working with federal authorities to investigate the source of the ketamine Perry took.
Ketamine has been a popular party drug for decades. In recent years, it has emerged as an alternative treatment for depression, with a growing number of clinics offering ketamine via infusion or injection to treat a range of mental illnesses.
Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions to treat depression and anxiety, but his last treatment was more than a week before his death. The coroner noted that due to its short half-life, any ketamine in Perry’s system “was not from the infusions.”
The coroner said he had high levels of ketamine in his system, equivalent to the amount used for general anesthesia during surgery.
The coroner ultimately ruled his death accidental, with possible causes including drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid use disorder.
Perry, best known for his role as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” had been open about his long struggle with opioid addiction and alcoholism, which he chronicled in his 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.” However, the coroner’s report said he had been drug-free for 19 months at the time of his death.
It is not uncommon for law enforcement to investigate and potentially prosecute those who supplied drugs responsible for high-profile deaths.
After Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, was convicted of manslaughter for administering a lethal dose of a powerful drug to the singer. More recently, federal prosecutors in New York indicted four men who provided the fentanyl-laced heroin that led to the death of actor Michael K. Williams in 2021.
