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He spent $350,000 on private flights to a treatment facility in Switzerland. He lived for a month in a detox center by the beach, and shook for 36 days straight as he recounted his traumas at a therapeutic healing center in Florida. He went to hundreds of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He had himself hypnotized.
Matthew Perry tried countless methods to get well. As the actor became a generational icon on the TV show “Friends,” behind the scenes he struggled to find a treatment for his yearslong addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“He was always looking for different stuff,” said Jon Paul Crimi, a friend of Perry’s who became a breathwork instructor after the actor introduced him to the therapy. “He worked hard on himself, different therapies and different modalities.”
It was that persistent search for a solution that led Perry to try ketamine, the dissociative drug that federal prosecutors in a case unsealed last week alleged that his live-in assistant, doctors and drug dealers conspired to supply him with. Five people face felony charges of falsely prescribing, selling or injecting ketamine that led to Perry’s spiraling addiction to the drug and his death.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” read a text from one doctor, who was arrested last week, to another as the two men discussed how much to charge. The fellow doctor he was texting signed a plea agreement for conspiring to distribute ketamine to Perry.
Toward the end of his life, Perry was being injected with six to eight shots of ketamine a day by his assistant, according to court records. Before the actor went for what would be a final soak in his back-porch hot tub, he told his assistant to “shoot me up with a big one.” He was discovered face down in October, his death attributed to the “acute effects of ketamine.”
Interviews with Perry’s friends and associates, as well as his own writing and the charges made public last week, present a portrait of an actor whose famous quips and comedic timing masked a darker and recurring arc: one of desperation for a cure.
Perry had only recently moved into his $6 million spread in Pacific Palisades, with a panoramic view of the ocean. Most nearby neighbors didn’t realize he lived there before they saw a commotion of activity outside on the night the actor died.
Less than 2 miles from the home is Lake Shrine, a self-realization retreat founded by a Hindu monk in 1950. Perry once said he had a breakthrough there while completing an Alcoholics Anonymous activity in which he analyzed dozens of his relationships. The quiet grounds are home to some of Mohandas Gandhi’s ashes. Perry’s Los Angeles was filled with such locations—the sober-living facility where he stayed for a time, the high-end beachside rehabs he returned to each day when filming wrapped, the mansion in Malibu he donated as a refuge for other recovering addicts.
“He did a lot of work on himself, too, but I think it gets harder and harder the more you relapse,” said Crimi.
The “Saturday Night Live” star Chris Farley’s overdose death in 1997 prompted Perry to check in to a Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation rehab in Minnesota, he wrote in his 2022 memoir. Other detox or rehab stays continued throughout the filming of “Friends,” at locations in Marina del Rey and Malibu.
During one treatment, the memoir said, Perry picked up the “Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous” and began attending AA meetings—including on the day after the final, 236th episode of “Friends” was taped in 2004.
When addiction proved overwhelming, Perry tried to “pull a geographic,” he wrote in his memoir, and travel to a new location or book a new job to escape. “I still thought if I removed myself from the situation I was in, I would be able to quit all the drugs and drinking and come out fighting,” he wrote in the memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.”
His pursuit to kick addictions over the years led him to far-flung places, including treatment centers in Utah, Switzerland and Pennsylvania.
After working sporadically as an actor in his 20s, Perry was booked for “Friends,” an NBC juggernaut that lasted 10 seasons, and turned his character, Chandler Bing, into an often-imitated fan favorite.
The “Gen X Neil Simon play,” as the show was called by one critic, inspired memes (“Pivot!”), speculation (Will Ross marry Rachel?) and fervent interest. The episode “The One After the Super Bowl” was watched by 52.9 million people, the biggest audience for a post-Super Bowl show in history.
“Friends” made Perry rich and famous. He dated Julia Roberts. He bought a $20 million penthouse because it looked like a place his hero, Batman, would live in.
His memoir showed fans the excruciating degree to which Perry fought addiction during that rise. He had left the set of “Friends” to attend rehab at Promises in Malibu, and said in an interview that he couldn’t remember filming “somewhere between season three and six.” He had a sober companion with him on set for parts of the filming.
Season nine was the only one he was completely sober for—it was also the only year his acting on the show earned him an individual Emmy nomination, he wrote.
Crimi, the breathwork instructor, met Perry through a mutual acquaintance who had lived in a sober-living facility with him. He knew celebrities, but this was another level of fame.
The two once hung out in a VIP room watching a Stanley Cup final game in Los Angeles, he remembered, with Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell and Zac Efron. Everyone seemed to want a picture with Perry.
“Dude, no offense,” Crimi recalls saying to Perry. “But there’s a lot of big names in here. Why does everybody want a f—ing photo with you?”
“It’s simple,” said Perry. “Will Ferrell is 20 feet big on the screen. I’ve been the same f—ing person, same character, in their living room for 20 years, and they think they know me.”
Perry’s death at age 54 hit several generations of fans at once. After “Friends” ended, it found a surprising second life on streaming platforms, with fans born after the show had ended embracing its depiction of an analog Manhattan, devoid of smartphones and dating apps.
Perry’s work after “Friends” was more sporadic than some of his co-stars, most of whom transitioned into other TV and film work. He starred in Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” had a recurring role on “The Good Wife” and worked on some quickly canceled shows. A play he wrote, “The End of Longing,” premiered in the U.K. and off-Broadway but failed with critics.
The play “amounts to a relapse,” said a review in the New York Times. “The part Mr. Perry has written for himself is a Chandler gone to seed, a round-the-clock drunk named Jack who is eking his way through his late 40s on sarcasm and a last filament of charm.”
After “Friends,” Perry cycled in and out of rehab, but also sought nontraditional treatments. He traveled to Florida for several weeks of therapy that involved reliving the traumas of his life, until “everyone was fainting and puking and shaking,” he wrote. It is unclear whether medicine or other substances were part of that treatment.
He went to rehab again, this time in Pennsylvania, and checked into a sober-living facility. He introduced Crimi to breathwork techniques that would inspire his friend to become an instructor himself.
When he was told he had to quit smoking if he wanted to live past 60, Perry hired a Los Angeles hypnotist, Kerry Gaynor, who successfully helped him kick the habit, the actor wrote in his memoir. (Gaynor declined to comment.)
Most everyone still knew him as the guy from “Friends,” and Perry seemed to have a love-hate relationship with the attention. He flew private to the treatment in Switzerland “given that everyone in the world recognized my damn face,” he wrote.
In his memoir, Perry said he had daily ketamine infusions while in Switzerland to help with pain and depression. “Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” he wrote. “But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel. Ketamine was not for me.”
Perry was later seemingly all-consumed by the drug. His assistant spent more than $67,000 in just a few weeks on ketamine for Perry through doctors or dealers, according to court documents.
Perry’s assistant went to great lengths to obtain the drug, including purchases of additional vials from a doctor on a Santa Monica street late one evening in early October 2023, court records said. Later, the same doctor injected Perry with ketamine inside a vehicle in a Long Beach parking lot. An order in late October for the actor was so large that a dealer threw in ketamine lollipops as an “add on,” court documents show.
His assistant administered at least six shots of the drug on each of the three days before Perry’s death, the documents say.
The assistant and one other person pleaded guilty to charges related to Perry’s access to and consumption of ketamine.
Two others were arrested: the woman who allegedly sold the ketamine that was injected into Perry on the day he died and the doctor who injected ketamine into him in the car. That doctor faces charges of distributing ketamine and altering and falsifying documents related to the federal investigation.
Federal prosecutors allege they focused on their own greed and making money rather than his well-being. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Crimi has worked as a sober companion to other celebrities, accompanying them to sets to make sure they stay clean and attend meetings. He has had a front-row seat watching how celebrities struggling with addiction can get caught in a public narrative about their recoveries and relapses.
“We put ’em on this amazing pedestal: so talented, so amazing. And then we knock ’em off, and then we root for them to get back up again,” he said.
Perry rode that roller coaster of addiction, Crimi said, but “he was always trying to get better. He wanted to get better.”
"
He spent $350,000 on private flights to a treatment facility in Switzerland. He lived for a month in a detox center by the beach, and shook for 36 days straight as he recounted his traumas at a therapeutic healing center in Florida. He went to hundreds of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He had himself hypnotized.
Matthew Perry tried countless methods to get well. As the actor became a generational icon on the TV show “Friends,” behind the scenes he struggled to find a treatment for his yearslong addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“He was always looking for different stuff,” said Jon Paul Crimi, a friend of Perry’s who became a breathwork instructor after the actor introduced him to the therapy. “He worked hard on himself, different therapies and different modalities.”
It was that persistent search for a solution that led Perry to try ketamine, the dissociative drug that federal prosecutors in a case unsealed last week alleged that his live-in assistant, doctors and drug dealers conspired to supply him with. Five people face felony charges of falsely prescribing, selling or injecting ketamine that led to Perry’s spiraling addiction to the drug and his death.
“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” read a text from one doctor, who was arrested last week, to another as the two men discussed how much to charge. The fellow doctor he was texting signed a plea agreement for conspiring to distribute ketamine to Perry.
Toward the end of his life, Perry was being injected with six to eight shots of ketamine a day by his assistant, according to court records. Before the actor went for what would be a final soak in his back-porch hot tub, he told his assistant to “shoot me up with a big one.” He was discovered face down in October, his death attributed to the “acute effects of ketamine.”
Interviews with Perry’s friends and associates, as well as his own writing and the charges made public last week, present a portrait of an actor whose famous quips and comedic timing masked a darker and recurring arc: one of desperation for a cure.
Perry had only recently moved into his $6 million spread in Pacific Palisades, with a panoramic view of the ocean. Most nearby neighbors didn’t realize he lived there before they saw a commotion of activity outside on the night the actor died.
Less than 2 miles from the home is Lake Shrine, a self-realization retreat founded by a Hindu monk in 1950. Perry once said he had a breakthrough there while completing an Alcoholics Anonymous activity in which he analyzed dozens of his relationships. The quiet grounds are home to some of Mohandas Gandhi’s ashes. Perry’s Los Angeles was filled with such locations—the sober-living facility where he stayed for a time, the high-end beachside rehabs he returned to each day when filming wrapped, the mansion in Malibu he donated as a refuge for other recovering addicts.
“He did a lot of work on himself, too, but I think it gets harder and harder the more you relapse,” said Crimi.
The “Saturday Night Live” star Chris Farley’s overdose death in 1997 prompted Perry to check in to a Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation rehab in Minnesota, he wrote in his 2022 memoir. Other detox or rehab stays continued throughout the filming of “Friends,” at locations in Marina del Rey and Malibu.
During one treatment, the memoir said, Perry picked up the “Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous” and began attending AA meetings—including on the day after the final, 236th episode of “Friends” was taped in 2004.
When addiction proved overwhelming, Perry tried to “pull a geographic,” he wrote in his memoir, and travel to a new location or book a new job to escape. “I still thought if I removed myself from the situation I was in, I would be able to quit all the drugs and drinking and come out fighting,” he wrote in the memoir, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.”
His pursuit to kick addictions over the years led him to far-flung places, including treatment centers in Utah, Switzerland and Pennsylvania.
After working sporadically as an actor in his 20s, Perry was booked for “Friends,” an NBC juggernaut that lasted 10 seasons, and turned his character, Chandler Bing, into an often-imitated fan favorite.
The “Gen X Neil Simon play,” as the show was called by one critic, inspired memes (“Pivot!”), speculation (Will Ross marry Rachel?) and fervent interest. The episode “The One After the Super Bowl” was watched by 52.9 million people, the biggest audience for a post-Super Bowl show in history.
“Friends” made Perry rich and famous. He dated Julia Roberts. He bought a $20 million penthouse because it looked like a place his hero, Batman, would live in.
His memoir showed fans the excruciating degree to which Perry fought addiction during that rise. He had left the set of “Friends” to attend rehab at Promises in Malibu, and said in an interview that he couldn’t remember filming “somewhere between season three and six.” He had a sober companion with him on set for parts of the filming.
Season nine was the only one he was completely sober for—it was also the only year his acting on the show earned him an individual Emmy nomination, he wrote.
Crimi, the breathwork instructor, met Perry through a mutual acquaintance who had lived in a sober-living facility with him. He knew celebrities, but this was another level of fame.
The two once hung out in a VIP room watching a Stanley Cup final game in Los Angeles, he remembered, with Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell and Zac Efron. Everyone seemed to want a picture with Perry.
“Dude, no offense,” Crimi recalls saying to Perry. “But there’s a lot of big names in here. Why does everybody want a f—ing photo with you?”
“It’s simple,” said Perry. “Will Ferrell is 20 feet big on the screen. I’ve been the same f—ing person, same character, in their living room for 20 years, and they think they know me.”
Perry’s death at age 54 hit several generations of fans at once. After “Friends” ended, it found a surprising second life on streaming platforms, with fans born after the show had ended embracing its depiction of an analog Manhattan, devoid of smartphones and dating apps.
Perry’s work after “Friends” was more sporadic than some of his co-stars, most of whom transitioned into other TV and film work. He starred in Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” had a recurring role on “The Good Wife” and worked on some quickly canceled shows. A play he wrote, “The End of Longing,” premiered in the U.K. and off-Broadway but failed with critics.
The play “amounts to a relapse,” said a review in the New York Times. “The part Mr. Perry has written for himself is a Chandler gone to seed, a round-the-clock drunk named Jack who is eking his way through his late 40s on sarcasm and a last filament of charm.”
After “Friends,” Perry cycled in and out of rehab, but also sought nontraditional treatments. He traveled to Florida for several weeks of therapy that involved reliving the traumas of his life, until “everyone was fainting and puking and shaking,” he wrote. It is unclear whether medicine or other substances were part of that treatment.
He went to rehab again, this time in Pennsylvania, and checked into a sober-living facility. He introduced Crimi to breathwork techniques that would inspire his friend to become an instructor himself.
When he was told he had to quit smoking if he wanted to live past 60, Perry hired a Los Angeles hypnotist, Kerry Gaynor, who successfully helped him kick the habit, the actor wrote in his memoir. (Gaynor declined to comment.)
Most everyone still knew him as the guy from “Friends,” and Perry seemed to have a love-hate relationship with the attention. He flew private to the treatment in Switzerland “given that everyone in the world recognized my damn face,” he wrote.
In his memoir, Perry said he had daily ketamine infusions while in Switzerland to help with pain and depression. “Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel,” he wrote. “But the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel. Ketamine was not for me.”
Perry was later seemingly all-consumed by the drug. His assistant spent more than $67,000 in just a few weeks on ketamine for Perry through doctors or dealers, according to court documents.
Perry’s assistant went to great lengths to obtain the drug, including purchases of additional vials from a doctor on a Santa Monica street late one evening in early October 2023, court records said. Later, the same doctor injected Perry with ketamine inside a vehicle in a Long Beach parking lot. An order in late October for the actor was so large that a dealer threw in ketamine lollipops as an “add on,” court documents show.
His assistant administered at least six shots of the drug on each of the three days before Perry’s death, the documents say.
The assistant and one other person pleaded guilty to charges related to Perry’s access to and consumption of ketamine.
Two others were arrested: the woman who allegedly sold the ketamine that was injected into Perry on the day he died and the doctor who injected ketamine into him in the car. That doctor faces charges of distributing ketamine and altering and falsifying documents related to the federal investigation.
Federal prosecutors allege they focused on their own greed and making money rather than his well-being. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Crimi has worked as a sober companion to other celebrities, accompanying them to sets to make sure they stay clean and attend meetings. He has had a front-row seat watching how celebrities struggling with addiction can get caught in a public narrative about their recoveries and relapses.
“We put ’em on this amazing pedestal: so talented, so amazing. And then we knock ’em off, and then we root for them to get back up again,” he said.
Perry rode that roller coaster of addiction, Crimi said, but “he was always trying to get better. He wanted to get better.”
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