Matthew Perry’s final words before he died from “the acute effects of ketamine” and was found in his hot tub have been made public.
Newly released court documents obtained by NBC News and published on Friday August 16, detail that Perry reportedly asked his assistant Kenneth Iwamasa for help administering the drug three times.
Referring to the drug, the Friends star, who died age 54 in October 2023, asked Iwamasa to “shoot me up with a big one.”
Iwamasa was among five people who have been indicted on federal charges stemming from the investigation into the actor’s death, the US Attorney’s Office announced on Thursday, August 15.
An autopsy revealed that Perry died as a result of the “acute effects of ketamine” on October 28, 2023. As well as Iwamasa, Jasveen Sangha (a.k.a. “the Ketamine Queen”), Mark Chavez, Salvador Plasencia and Erik Fleming have all been charged.
Iwamasa, Perry’s live-in personal assistant, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.
On the day of Perry’s death, Iwamasa administered three doses of ketamine to the actor, beginning with a first dose around 8:30 that morning and a second one four hours later. He said he administered the third dose just 40 minutes after that before preparing the hot tub for Perry and leaving the actor to run errands. Iwamasa found Perry unresponsive in the hot tub when he returned home.
While those are the three injections that prosecutors allege led to Perry’s death, Iwamasa claimed he administered 27 total in the final five days of Perry’s life. Iwamasa does not have any medical training and was following instructions laid out by Plasencia.
Friends and family were “blindsided” and “saddened” by Iwamasa’s arrest, Us Weekly reported on Thursday August 15.
“Matthew kept secrets,” a source close to Matthew exclusively told Us Weekly. “I wouldn’t be shocked if Kenny was the only one who knew how bad it really was.”
While Perry may not have been open about the severity of his addiction immediately prior to his death, he opened about his past troubles in his memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing.
“Ketamine was a very popular street drug in the 1980s. There is a synthetic form of it now,” he wrote in his book, released in 2022.
Perry explained he would “disassociate” and used a prescribed ketamine treatment “to ease pain and help with depression.”
The actor added: “Has my name written all over it — they might as well have called it ‘Matty.’ It was something different, and anything different is good.”
