Charlie Sheen revealed his thoughts on Matthew Perry’s well-being right before his death from excessive ketamine administration.
In a Tuesday, September 16, interview on YouTube’s Piers Morgan Uncensored, Sheen, 60, said he “could see” Perry promoting his 2022 book on beating addiction and believed he wasn’t well. (Perry died at the age of 54 in October 2023, almost one year after his book Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing was published.)
“I could tell he wasn’t sober, talking about a book that is all about sobriety and recovery,” Sheen claimed to host Morgan, 60. “I felt really bad, I felt bad for him. When I heard a little snippet from the audio book, he didn’t have that perfect, specific, laser focused diction that he always had, delivering comedy or anything at the level that he did. So I could hear a man who was … handicapped.”
Despite not personally engaging with the Friends actor during his book tour, Sheen, who is currently promoting a Netflix documentary and a memoir that explores his own addiction battles, told Morgan he wishes he had reached out to him.
In the wake of recent arrests related to Matthew Perry’s death, Us Weekly is looking back at how the late star discussed his use of ketamine treatment in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Nearly only one year before his death, Perry wrote that he used the drug “to ease pain […]
“I didn’t know Matthew that well… I read his book, and I read it in a day, and I loved it. And I’m so proud of him and inspired by it,” Sheen said. “Then I wanted to reach out, you know, because I’m in his book … when he says, ‘Eff Charlie Sheen and I’m going to be that famous one day too.’ And I didn’t. I think he died, like, three weeks after I read the book.”
Sheen, whose book The Book of Sheen: A Memoir covers his controversial journey in the public eye amid various drug use, said that while he didn’t know if his outreach could’ve saved Perry, he would have liked to have shared his insight with him. “I could feel that sort of the prison that he, you know, put himself in,” Sheen said.
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Charlie Sheen Michael Buckner/Penske Media via Getty Images
Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his Los Angeles’ home on October 28, 2023, and was pronounced dead later that day. A toxicology report issued in December that year found that he died from “acute effects of ketamine.” The report also noted that he had been administered regular ketamine infusions to treat anxiety and depression — but the last recorded transfusion occurred more than one week prior to his death which led to deeper investigation.
In August 2024, five people faced various federal charges as a result of the investigation, including “conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death.” All five of those people pleaded guilty to varying charges including the most recent, Jasveen Sangha, also known as the “Ketamine Queen,” who pleaded guilty to five federal charges including the sale of the dose of ketamine that led to Perry’s death.
Matthew Perry Michael Kovac/FilmMagic
Sangha is due to be sentenced in December. The four other people — Perry’s former personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, Dr. Mark Chavez, and Perry’s friend Erik Fleming — are due to be sentenced in either November or December.
