More details of Matthew Perry’s autopsy report have been revealed.
According to the documents, which were released on Friday, December 15, a pal of the Friends alum claimed Perry was “angry and mean” in the weeks before his death because he had been taking testosterone shots.
On top of divulging the star’s cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine, the report also shared Perry had been on an opioid-like drug buprenorphine, which is used to curb pain and help with addiction to opioids, as well as Tammoxifen to lose weight, an antidiabetic medication and nicotine lollipops.
Additionally, Perry was attempting to quit smoking at the time of his death, however, his assistant noted he had been smoking about two packs of cigarettes per day.
The report also noted Perry heavily relied on prescribed and over-the-counter medication on a day-to-day basis.
“In the assistant’s bedroom, there were multiple open, empty, half-filled medication bottles prescribed to the decedent, as well as over-the-counter medications, vitamins, digestive aids and dishes filled with multiple various loose pills, tablets, caplets, candy and breath mints,” the medical examiner wrote.
“Prescribed ointments, digestive aids and oral rinses” were found in Perry’s bathroom.
The sitcom actor was also receiving ketamine infusions regularly before his passing, however, the dose that killed him was seemingly self-administered.
According to Dr. Bankole Johnson, one of the top neuroscientists and physicians in the world, “It is more likely this was recreational ketamine use," as Perry’s last infusion occurred a week and a half before he died, and ketamine’s half-life is only three to four hours.
“It would be questionable medicine to provide ketamine to someone also using buprenorphine — a true recipe for disaster,” Johnson told Page Six.
As OK! previously reported, following the news the tranquilizer was the 54-year-old’s cause of death, a portion of his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir, resurfaced, where Perry spoke about using the drug.
In the book, Perry recalled getting ketamine infusions at a Swiss rehab clinic amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s. There is a synthetic form of it now, and it’s used for two reasons: to ease pain and help with depression,” he penned. “Has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty.’”
He claimed ketamine felt like a “giant exhale” as he would “disassociate” during the treatments, which he noted felt like “dying.”
“‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘This is what happens when you die,'” he wrote. “Yet I would continually sign up for this s--- because it was something different, and anything different is good.”
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“Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel,” Perry added, before stating, “Ketamine was not for me.”
Page Six reported on the autopsy report.
