Matthew Perry Documentary: The Ketamine Case Behind His Death

On October 28th, 2023, at about 8:30 in the morning, Matthew Perry's live-in assistant gave him a shot of ketamine. By the afternoon there had been three. On October 27th, Netflix releases The One About Matthew Perry, a three-part series told by his inner circle. This is the record before you watch it: the federal plea agreements, the government's sentencing filings, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's findings and the letters his family wrote to the judge. The documentary follows his life from Ottawa to Friends, the numbers he gave himself (sixty-five detoxes, more than 6,000 AA meetings, seven or nine million dollars spent trying to get sober), the 2018 colon rupture he kept private for four years, and the memoir he started in the notes app of his phone. Then it follows the ketamine: two doctors, one of them texting "I wonder how much this moron will pay," a licensed addiction counselor, a dealer prosecutors called the Ketamine Queen, who had been warned in 2020 that her ketamine killed a man, and fifty-one vials delivered to his house. All five defendants pleaded guilty; their sentences ran from eight months of home detention to fifteen years in federal prison. Two of them have filed appeals. Sources: U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California (press releases, 2024–2026); the indictment and informations in U.S. v. Sangha and Plasencia, U.S. v. Iwamasa, U.S. v. Fleming and U.S. v. Chavez; Kenneth Iwamasa's plea agreement; government sentencing memoranda and victim impact statements (via CourtListener/RECAP); the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner (December 15, 2023); the Associated Press, CNN, NPR, NBC News, CBS Los Angeles, ABC News, Reuters, NewsNation, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Encyclopedia, the Television Academy, the White House archive (2013) and the official Netflix trailer. Where the sources disagree, the documentary gives both versions. Unauthorized Lives tells famous lives from the record, not the script. This is an independent channel, not affiliated with Netflix, NBC, Warner Bros. or the Perry family. The series had not premiered when this documentary was made, so nothing here describes what it shows. Matthew Perry's death was ruled an accident by the Medical Examiner. If you or someone you love is struggling with substance use, the SAMHSA National Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357. Photo reference: Office of National Drug Control Policy (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons. #MatthewPerry #TrueCrime #Documentary