Matthew Perry was no one’s victim.
We learn a lot about the manner of his death, and it’s all horrific: the doctors who prosecutors say illegally supplied him with potent opiates; the personal assistant who frequently injected him with drugs; the near-death experience that did little to deter his dealers, accomplices, and Perry himself.
“Just shoot me a big bullet.”
That was Perry’s last instruction to his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, on the day he died. He had already had two ketamine injections that day, one at 8:30 in the morning and the other around 12:30 in the afternoon.
The third injection, the “big one” requested by Perry, was administered by Iwamasa just 40 minutes later. Iwamasa then left to run errands.
Perry, stoned and alone, climbed into his hot tub.
All this makes me wonder: Did he perhaps want to die?
We learn a lot about how Matthew Perry died, and it’s all very sordid: the doctors who illegally supplied him with opiates; the personal assistant who frequently injected him with drugs; the near-death experience that did nothing to deter his dealers, accomplices, or Perry himself.
“Shoot me with a big one.” That was Perry’s final instruction to his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa (pictured), on the day he died — after he had already received two ketamine injections, one at 8:30 a.m. and another around 12:30 p.m. that same day.
To be clear, if guilty, those accused of supplying Perry with black market ketamine, Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Dr. Mark Chavez in particular, should be punished to the full extent of the law. They showed cowardly greed at the expense of a very sick man.
At one point, Plasencia, who pleaded not guilty and was known as “Dr. P,” boasted that he had aggressively overcharged Perry, texting Chavez: “I wonder how much this idiot will pay.”
But Matthew Perry was no idiot. He knew exactly what he was doing.
It was Perry who demanded the ketamine, regardless of the price: a staggering $55,000 worth of Plasencia in one month.
And it was Perry who found another supplier, street dealer Erik Fleming, who reportedly put the actor and his assistant in touch with Jasveen Sangha, the so-called “Ketamine Queen of LA.”
In the weeks before his death, Perry was shot to death in the backseat of a car parked in front of an aquarium in Long Beach, California.
Days later, he was paralyzed, unable to move or speak, after an at-home injection of Plascencia — hours after Perry had taken a supervised dose of ketamine at a medical facility.
He was given injections by Iwamasa six to eight times a day and was found unconscious at least twice.
Matthew Perry felt the rules didn’t apply to him.
“I think of all the doctors and nurses at UCLA Medical Center who saved my life,” he wrote in his 2022 memoir. “I am no longer welcome in that hospital because I was caught smoking there for the last time.”
This is the same man who drove his Porsche into someone’s living room and walked away without arrest or charges.
Why wouldn’t he feel justified? He was rarely, if ever, called to account.
The third injection, the “big one” requested by Perry, was administered by Iwamasa just 40 minutes later. Iwamasa then went grocery shopping. Perry, high and alone, climbed into his hot tub.
“Perry couldn’t handle the tough love,” an Alcoholics Anonymous source told the New York Post. “I feel sorry for him, but […] Sometimes ‘helping someone’ really is a help.’
That’s true. But all evidence points to Perry ultimately refusing help—instead, he gives in to the darkest parts of himself.
Perry wrote of his own amazement at the fact that he was still alive: 55 Vicodin a day, more than 65 detoxes, $9 million spent trying to get sober, 14 surgeries, an exploded colon, and 9 months in a colostomy.
“Addiction has ruined so much of my life, it’s not funny,” he wrote. “I will always have the guts of a man in his nineties… the scars… my stomach looks like a topographical map of China.”
He knew that touching alcohol or drugs could only end one way.
“I don’t have any sobriety left in me,” he said. “It’s going to kill me.”
He knew. Maybe that’s why he pushed so many people away.
“Angry and mean,” a friend said of Perry’s behavior in his final days.
He allegedly threw a coffee table at his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz, when she confronted him about her cheating on him with a 19-year-old girl on Raya, after which she broke off their engagement.
His long-term sober companion, a woman named Morgan Moses, was described by Perry as “the nicest person in the world.” He reportedly pushed her against a wall and then onto a bed.
And that’s without even mentioning the very young women Perry recruited to deliver him drugs. Or the nurse who quit her job after working with him. Or the ex-girlfriend who threatened to sue him for getting her hooked on drugs and was only silenced by a settlement and a nondisclosure agreement.
Or that he would have thrown things and punched walls in fits of rage, or that he would have said to the terrified women in his life, “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have.”
Perry clearly had problems with women. He also hated himself.
“Most of the time I have these nagging thoughts,” he wrote. “I’m not enough, I don’t matter, I’m too needy… I need love, but I don’t trust it. If I drop my game, my Chandler, and show you who I really am, then you might see me, but worse, you might see me and leave… So I’m going to leave you first.”
Perry would have turned 55 on Monday. It’s quite possible that he wanted to die young, or at least knew he would, and that he would leave before he did more harm — to others, perhaps, but also to himself and his legacy.
He allegedly threw a coffee table at his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz (pictured), when she confronted him about cheating on him with a 19-year-old on Raya and broke off their engagement. He also allegedly pushed his sober companion against a wall and then onto a bed.
It is quite possible that he wanted to die young, or at least knew he would, and that he would leave before he could do more harm—to others perhaps, but also to himself and his legacy. (Pictured: with Morgan Moses)
He never seemed to get beyond ‘Chandler’, ‘Friends’, or even beyond the idea that he was Batman. ‘Mattman’ was his favorite nickname.
He never grew out of the teenage years when wealth and fame were the ultimate drug.
“I was pretty sure fame would change everything,” he wrote, “and I wanted it more than anyone else on the planet. I necessary it. It was the only thing that would cure me. I was sure of that.’
Fame and the wealth that came with it were probably the worst thing that could ever happen to him.
That’s how he got away with being a drunken, drug-addled wreck on “Friends” — he admitted to downing at least 16 drinks a day on set — and, by his own admission, was sober for only one season.
Her co-star Jennifer Aniston confronted him about this, she wrote in her memoir.
“We can smell it,” she told him. He was so inaudible during a table read that the entire cast forced an intervention. But “Friends” was such a cash cow that it’s easy to imagine network executives being unwilling to pull Perry from the shoot, even temporarily.
“I would always show up hungover,” Perry told Diane Sawyer in 2022. “I would be shaking and really hungover.”
But the show must go on, right?
After “Friends,” Perry found another show to perform: that of a finally clean, civilized megastar who was there only to help.
He claimed to have been sober for 18 months while promoting his memoir, selling a lie that may have been his last and greatest highlight.