After prosecutors announced charges against five individuals in connection to Matthew Perry’s overdose death, many have been wondering about the drug behind the tragedy, a substance used as a party drug, anesthetic or a form of alternative medicine.
Perry, known for his role as “Chandler Bing” on the hit NBC sitcom “Friends,” which ran from 1994 to 2004, was found unresponsive in the bath tub of his Los Angeles home in October 2023 and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
The youngest of the six “Friends” lead actors, Perry was 54 years old at the time of his death.
Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety, but it was not the supervised therapy doses that killed him. His last session took place more than a week prior to his death.
According to prosecutors, Perry had been seeking out unsupervised doses of the controlled substance and had developed an “out of control” dependence on it. Ketamine, an anesthetic with psychedelic properties, is a popular party drug that has recently been found to be a promising alternative treatment for some mental illnesses but carries serious medical risks.
When he died, the levels of ketamine in his body were high — equivalent to the amount used for general anesthesia during surgery, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Though use of ketamine as an alternative medicine for depression and chronic pain has grown more common, its only FDA-approved use is as an anesthetic.
Developed in the 1960s for use as a battlefield anesthetic during the Vietnam War, ketamine was long exclusively used in controlled settings before eventually gaining popularity as a party drug in the 2000s and later as a possible alternative medicine in the late 2010s.
According to Lindsay Smith Rogers of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, the drug’s safety potential is impacted by side effects such as hallucinations and altered perception, mood changes that may shift from euphoria to suicidal ideation and behavior that may shift from subdued to violent.
The university notes that non-anesthetic use of ketamine are often used and delivered at cash-only clinics in what is considered “off-label” use.
Ketamine is labeled as a Schedule III substance on the Controlled Substances Act, which the legislation denotes a lower potential for abuse than Schedule I and II substances, while noting a currently accepted medical use.
Other drugs currently listed in Schedule III include anabolic steroids and buprenorphine, also known as suboxone, a drug commonly used in treatment for opioid addiction.