Initial toxicology tests have shown no fentanyl or meth in Matthew Perry’s system, according to a new report.
The late Friends star was found lifeless in a hot pipe outside his home in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades on Saturday. He was 54 years old. Throughout his life, Perry was open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol.
The preliminary test is less thorough than the full toxicology test that is still pending, but currently rules out meth or fentanyl overdose as the cause of death, the report said. TMZ. The full test will determine whether Perry had harmful levels of prescription drugs in his system at the time of his death.
It was previously reported that investigators found prescription drugs in the actor’s home, but that they were all properly labeled and stored in pill bottles.
In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote that after his colon exploded in 2018, he was prescribed opiates that he deemed insufficient to deal with his pain, prompting him to turn to street dealers to supply him with fentanyl. laced OxyContin.
“The street pills cost about $75 a pill, so I gave the guy $3,000 a pop, many times a week,” he wrote.
The shocking death of Matthew Perry in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on Saturday prompted an outpouring of grief
Perry’s Friends co-stars say they were ‘devastated’ by his death and were more like family than castmates
After an initial investigation, the Los Angeles County coroner has delayed issuing a cause of death, which could take weeks to determine. Those who knew him claim Perry was clean and sober at the time of his death.
Perry wrote at the beginning of his million-selling memoir, “Hello, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.”
On Sunday, Perry’s book hit No. 1 on Amazon, replacing Britney Spears’ memoir.
Unknown at the time of the smash hit Friends was Perry’s struggle with addiction and an intense desire to please the public.
“Friends” was huge. I couldn’t jeopardize that. I loved the script. I loved my fellow actors. I loved the scripts. “I loved everything about the show, but I struggled with my addictions, which only exacerbated my sense of shame,” he wrote in his memoir. “I had a secret and no one was allowed to know.”
‘I felt like I was going to die if the live audience didn’t laugh, and that’s definitely not healthy. But sometimes I could say a line and the audience wouldn’t laugh and I would sweat and sometimes convulse.”
Perry wrote. “If I didn’t get the laughs I should have gotten, I would panic. I felt that every night. This pressure put me in a bad place. I also knew the six people who made that show, but one of them was sick.”
Perry wrote in his memoir that he spent $9 million to get sober
He recalled in his memoir that Aniston confronted him about his drunkenness during filming.
“I know you drink,” he recalled her telling him once. “We can smell it,” she said, in what Perry called a “kind of strange but loving way, and the plural ‘we’ hit me like a sledgehammer.”
A fellow member of Perry’s recovery program told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview on Tuesday: ‘Matty didn’t drink. He was a big part of our AA community. He attended meetings, spoke at rallies and worked with a handful of newcomers.
“He had a sponsor and was a sponsor. He seemed to be doing well.”
The insider said the actor was focused on helping others battle addiction and had recently expressed an interest in sharing his story through public speaking.
‘Matty said he wanted to go back to the universities and talk about alcoholism. That was his gift. He could speak so well and motivate people,” the source added.
“It was important for him to reach the younger generation and spread his Don’t Give Up message. He really lived by those words.
‘He always made people laugh, even during meetings. But he was also spiritual, not religious, but spiritual. He spoke and knew this was his mission. To help other people, to give them hope.
“Matty will forever be the definition of hope because he never gave up. He turned his life around and helped countless people in the program. More than he could imagine.”
Fentanyl, a powerful opioid, is currently the deadliest drug in the US. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdose deaths increased more than sevenfold from 2015 to 2021.
As of 2020, more than 100,000 deaths per year have been linked to drug overdoses, and about two-thirds of those are linked to fentanyl. The death toll is more than ten times higher than in 1988, at the height of the crack epidemic.
The US has taken a slew of measures to stem the flow of fentanyl entering the country. In total, the Biden administration has imposed more than 200 sanctions related to the illegal drug trade.
State lawmakers across the country are responding to the deadliest overdose crisis in U.S. history by imposing stricter penalties for fentanyl possession.