LOS ANGELES — “Friends” actor Matthew Perry had an out-of-control addiction to ketamine, injecting the drug six to eight times a day before he died of an accidental overdose, prosecutors say.
Five people have been charged in connection with Perry’s death, including his personal assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, and Dr. Salvador Plascencia, who allegedly supplied him with drugs.
In court documents filed Thursday, federal prosecutors charged that Dr. Plascencia told his patient a week before Perry’s death that it was too late and that he was addicted to drugs, but then offered to sell ketamine through Mr. Iwamasa.
Matthew Perry in 2015. Brian Ack/InVision/AP Files
Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions to treat depression and anxiety, but it was not the supervised dosage that killed him; his last treatment took place more than a week before his death.
Prosecutors said Perry had been taking controlled substances unsupervised and had developed an “uncontrollable” addiction to ketamine, a hallucinogenic anesthetic drug commonly used at parties that has recently shown promise as an alternative treatment for mental illness but carries serious medical risks.
Perry, 54, was found face-down on the edge of a heated swimming pool at his Pacific Palisades home on October 28, 2023. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, he had high levels of ketamine in his system at the time of his death, equivalent to the amount used for general anesthesia during surgery.
According to prosecutors, Perry’s assistant, 59-year-old Iwamasa, pleaded guilty on August 7 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, and admitted to repeatedly injecting Perry with the drug without any medical training.
Court documents outlining Iwamasa’s plea agreement detail the severity of Perry’s addiction.
According to the agreement, Iwamasa injected Perry at 8:30 a.m. on the day of his death and again at 12:45 p.m. while he was watching a movie.
“Approximately 40 minutes later, Victim MP asked Defendant to prepare a hot tub for Victim MP and told Defendant to ‘hit me a big one,’ and administered another shot of ketamine,” the document states.
After giving Perry her third injection in six hours, Iwamasa went out to run an errand, according to the documents, and when he returned home he found Perry face-down in a Jacuzzi, according to the plea agreement.
Iwamasa told authorities he began injecting Perry about a month before his death after he was introduced to Placencia on or around Sept. 30, 2023. According to court documents, Iwamasa alleges Placencia sold Perry liquid ketamine and ketamine lozenges.
Plascencia, 42, was arrested Thursday in Southern California and charged with one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. He pleaded not guilty in court Thursday afternoon. Plascencia’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal prosecutors say Plascencia is accused of teaching Iwamasa how to administer the drugs intramuscularly, despite having no medical experience or training.
Perry then instructed Iwamasa to contact Plascencia to purchase more vials, and the doctor and his personal assistant communicated almost daily over the next two weeks to arrange for additional purchases, the plea agreement states.
According to prosecutors, on Oct. 12, 2023, about two weeks before Perry’s death, the actor received a ketamine infusion from a doctor, but Plascencia continued to request additional doses after the treatment. According to plea agreement documents, Plascencia agreed to meet Perry at his home later that day and administered a “large amount of ketamine” to the actor.
Perry had an adverse reaction to the dosage: His blood pressure spiked, his body “began to freeze up” and he was unable to speak or move, prosecutors said. Plascencia allegedly left additional vials of ketamine in Perry’s home, even though Perry had adverse reactions to the drug.
The next day, prosecutors said, Perry instructed Iwamasa to obtain more ketamine from another source, an acquaintance named Eric Fleming with whom Iwamasa had previously been in contact.
Fleming, 54, pleaded guilty Aug. 8 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distributing ketamine resulting in death.
Iwamasa’s plea agreement states that Perry, through an assistant, paid Plascencia at least $55,000 for ketamine in the month before Perry’s death. Fleming was paid about $12,000 in two separate transactions, including one just days before Perry’s death.
Another doctor was also arrested and charged Thursday, and a third has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the actor’s death.
Perry, who rose to fame on the hit sitcom series “Friends,” had been open about his addiction issues in the weeks before his death, saying in a 2022 interview with the podcast “Q with Tom Power” that he couldn’t watch “Friends” because his weight would reveal whether he was abusing alcohol, drugs or cocaine.
In his memoir, Perry wrote that after years of drug addiction, “I should have been dead,” and that getting sober gave him a purpose in life.
In 2013, Perry received the Champion of Recovery Award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. That same year, he converted his Malibu home into a sober living home, which he ran for two years.
“I’ve said for a long time that when I die, I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing people think of,” Perry said the year before his death. [helping people] “I’m the first one to be mentioned, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving that.”
