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🗓️ 19 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Matthew Perry wrote about his issues with addiction to alcohol and drugs. In his memoir, he said he began drinking at 14 and was an alcoholic by 18.
Perry first went to rehab and completed a 28-day program at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation after a jet-ski accident led to an addiction to Vicodin. In his 2022 memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and the Big, Terrible Thing," Perry claimed to have been to rehab 15 times, detoxed 65 times, and spent about $7 to $9 million trying to get sober.
After years of addiction, Matthew Perry spent 5-months in the hospital after his colon burst from prolonged opioid abuse. Perry says he was in surgery for seven hours and in a coma for two weeks. Doctors told his family he had a 2% chance of survival. After leaving the hospital, Perry used a colostomy bag for months.
Two years after his near-death experience, Matthew Perry goes to a Rehab facility in Switzerland. He wrote that he faked pain symptoms to get Oxycontin during COVID. He was also getting daily Ketamine infusions. While at the facility, Perry needed to have surgery and was given propofol.
When he woke up 11 hours later, he found out his heart had stopped for 5 minutes and during the long CPR process 8 of his ribs were broken. The doctor then refused more meds.
On October 28, Matthew Perry went to his country club to play a game of Pickleball with friends. Perry returned to his home after the game and was seen by his assistant, who was leaving the house to run errands. At 4 p.m., the assistant returned home and found Perry floating face down in the heated end of the pool.
Paramedics pulled Perry out of the pool and pronounced him dead at the scene.
Prosecutors have already implicated Jasveen Sangha, known as the "Ketamine Queen," who sold the drug involved in Matthew Perry's death.
She is also connected to other customer deaths, and prosecutors believe there are likely more victims given the volume of drugs Sangha sold. Sangha remains in custody without bond in connection with Perry's death. Drug dealer Eric Fleming, who reportedly served as a program director at the Bel-Air rehab Red Door, also had a resident die of an overdose while under his watch.
Court documents reveal the close ties between Sangha, Fleming, and assistant Kenneth Iwamasa. Iwamasa told Fleming he "cleaned up the scene" by disposing of ketamine vials and syringes and "deleted everything."
Fleming then informed Sangha that he believed they were protected since he never dealt with Perry directly, only through Iwamasa, who would be considered Perry's "enabler." In their communications, Sangha and Fleming refer to Perry using the code name "Chandler."
The doctor directly implicated in Matthew Perry’s ketamine overdose, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, now agreeds to plead guilty for his part in Perry's death.
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0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
0:04.8 | Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. |
0:11.2 | TV superstar Matthew Perry, dead of a drug overdose in his hot tub. |
0:18.3 | The star of Friends, his doctor now agrees to plead guilty in Matthew Perry's tragic |
0:26.8 | ketamine, overdose, death. What happened? I'm Nancy Grace. This is crime stories. Thank you for being with us. |
0:39.1 | In the last days, Friends star Matthew Perry's doctor, Dr. Salvador Placincia, agrees to plead guilty four counts ketamine distribution following Perry's shock death. |
0:51.9 | Placincia, nicknamed Dr. P., faces a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in federal prison. |
1:03.0 | Now, as of right now, he has not entered that plea, but he says he agrees to plead guilty. |
1:10.7 | Will he do it? This leaves only the |
1:14.5 | ketamine queen, Javine Senga, as a defendant who has not taken a plea deal. First of all, |
1:23.0 | let's start with disgraced Dr. Dr. Placencia. What happened to Matthew Perry? |
1:30.3 | First of all, the same way I like to start every jury trial. Let me start with the 911 call. |
1:39.3 | Listen. |
1:40.3 | Answer 23, rest of 23. You can't my sign. Yeah, M-S-9. All the radio. Mr. Burt of the drowning. ...broughts them for a few drops. Enter 23, registry 23, here, MS-9. You can't tell a lot, but I learned something significant. Let's hear that one more time, Sid. |
2:01.5 | Answer 23, recipe 23, you're at 9 all in radio. Just one of the drowning. |
2:10.1 | Drops them for a few drops. |
2:13.0 | Into 23, rest of 23, here must be my son. |
2:15.4 | Now, some of those numbers are universal. |
2:19.7 | Sometimes you hear numbers across a police ban or on an EMS that are specific to that region. |
2:28.8 | But what I'm hearing that really jumps out at me is response to the drowning. |
2:35.0 | So at the beginning, it was believed that the friends' star died of drowning because that's |
2:42.6 | what was reported to them. |
... |
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