MATTHEW PERRY - DRUG-DEALING UNDERWORLD EXPOSED!

AS AUTHORITIES ZONE IN ON SUSPECTS IN THE BELOVED FRIENDS STAR'S TRAGIC KETAMINE DEATH, HOLLYWOOD USERS AND ABUSERS ARE ON EDGE.

IN his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew Perry — who struggled with alcohol and opioid addiction for most of his life — wrote about undergoing ketamine therapy. His doctors used the dissociative anesthetic drug “to ease pain and help with depression,” he explained. “Ketamine felt like a giant exhale,” like “being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel.” However, he added, “the hangover was rough and outweighed the shovel. Ketamine was not for me.”

Yet he continued to use it under a doctor’s supervision. He was also secretly abusing it, an autopsy report confirmed. On Oct. 28, the 54-year-old Friends star’s lifeless body was discovered in the hot tub of his L.A. home. His cause of death: the “acute effects of ketamine.” But the actor’s last treatment with his doctor had been conducted a week and a half before his tragic passing. Because the drug metabolizes quickly, “the ketamine in his system at death could not be from that infusion therapy,” his autopsy report stated. As it became apparent that someone had to have provided Matthew with the drug that was in his system, says a source, authorities quietly launched a criminal probe that’s put Hollywood’s drug-dealing underworld on high alert. Reports reveal the LAPD — which is working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service on the case — is now planning a press conference to announce possible charges. (Previously, the U.S. Attorney’s office had “no comment.”) Star can further confirm that some well-known names are caught up in the investigation. “They have a list of suspects,” says the source. “It’s got a lot of people in Hollywood on edge.”

FINDING CLUES