Six months after Matthew Perry’s death from the acute effects of the anesthetic ketamine, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are launching a joint criminal investigation into how the Friends star obtained his prescription drugs. It started.Source confirmed Los Angeles Times on tuesday.
Perry died on October 28, 2023, at age 54, in a hot tub at his Pacific Palisades home. The Los Angeles coroner said traces of ketamine, sometimes used to treat depression, were found in his stomach.
However, an autopsy revealed that the levels of ketamine in his blood were similar to those used during general anesthesia. “At the high concentrations of ketamine detected in postmortem blood samples, the primary lethal effects appear to be due to both cardiovascular overstimulation and respiratory depression,” the autopsy report said.
The autopsy also identified drowning, coronary artery disease, and buprenorphine, which is used to treat opioid addiction, which Perry spoke openly about in interviews and in his 2022 memoir, as the causes of death. There was no evidence of foul play, and the incident was ruled an accident.
However, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration are currently investigating how the actor came to have high levels of ketamine in his system and system. TMZ first reported the investigationprimarily concerned with who supplied the drugs and under what circumstances.
The coroner said Perry had been receiving intravenous ketamine therapy for anxiety and depression in the days before his death. His last known infusion was a week and a half ago, meaning the ketamine found in his body at the autopsy was not from the procedure.
In her 2022 memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” Perry wrote that she began her career at the age of 14 and was thrust into the spotlight on “Friends,” which aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004. He spoke about his long history with drug abuse, which escalated as a result of this. In short, he wrote, he was taking up to five dozen pills a day. The medical examiner said he had been sober for 19 months at the time of his death, had no other drugs in his system, and no drugs or drug paraphernalia were found in his home.
The medical examiner also found that the popular actor, who once had a habit of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, had diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a group of diseases that can block airflow and cause breathing problems. also pointed out.
This is not the first time federal agents have been involved in a drug-related celebrity death. Following Mac Miller’s 2018 overdose death, police arrested and charged Ryan Michael Reavis with selling counterfeit fentanyl pills to the rapper. He was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison in April 2022.
