What is ketamine? What to know about the drug behind Matthew Perry's overdose – NBC Chicago

After prosecutors filed charges against five people in connection with Matthew Perry's overdose death, many wondered what drug was behind the tragedy: a substance used as a party drug, an anesthetic, or a form of alternative medicine.

Perry, known for his role as “Chandler Bing” on the hit NBC sitcom “Friends,” which ran from 1994 to 2004, was found unconscious in the bathtub of his Los Angeles home in October 2023 and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.

Perry, the youngest of the six main actors in “Friends,” was 54 years old at the time of his death.

Perry had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy to treat depression and anxiety, but it was not the supervised doses of therapy that killed him. His last session occurred more than a week before his death.

Prosecutors say Perry had sought uncontrolled doses of the controlled substance and developed an “uncontrollable” dependence on it. Ketamine, a narcotic with psychedelic properties, is a popular party drug that has recently been identified as a promising alternative treatment for some mental illnesses but carries serious medical risks.

When he died, the level of ketamine in his body was high – equivalent to the amount used in general anesthesia during surgery, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office.

Although ketamine is increasingly used as an alternative medicine for depression and chronic pain, it is only approved by the FDA as an anesthetic.

Ketamine was developed in the 1960s as an anesthetic on battlefields during the Vietnam War and was used for a long time exclusively in controlled environments before finally gaining popularity as a party drug in the 2000s and as a possible alternative medicine in the late 2010s.

According to Lindsay Smith Rogers of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, the drug's safety potential is compromised by side effects such as hallucinations and altered perception, mood swings that can range from euphoria to suicidal thoughts, and behavior that can shift from restless to violent.

The university points out that ketamine is often used and administered without an anesthetic in cash-only clinics. This is known as “off-label use.”

Ketamine is listed as a Schedule III substance under the Controlled Substances Act. According to the law, ketamine's abuse potential is lower than Schedules I and II substances, but its use is currently accepted medically.

Other medicines currently listed in Schedule III include anabolic steroids and buprenorphine, also known as Suboxone, a medicine commonly used to treat opioid addiction.