Matthew Perry felt ‘strongly he was going to die’, says mother

Matthew Perry felt “strongly” he was going to die soon, prior to his death, his mother has said. The beloved Friends star died at the age of just 54 in October last year from the “acute effects of ketamine”.

He had been seeking treatment for depression and anxiety when he became addicted to intravenous ketamine last autumn. Now Suzanne Morrison, Perry's mother, has told NBC’s morning talk show Today that he said he believed he would die “almost a year ago”.

She said: “He came up to me and said, ‘I love you so much and I’m so happy to be with you now’. It was almost as though it was a premonition or something. I didn’t think about it at the time but I thought, ‘How long has it been since we’ve had a conversation like that. It’s been years’.”

Ms Morrison continued: “I think there was something… there was an inevitability to what was going to happen next to him, and he felt it very strongly. But he said, ‘I’m not frightened anymore’. And it worried me.”

A full interview with her is set to be broadcast on the programme on Monday, the first anniversary of Perry’s death. It comes as earlier this month, Mark Chavez, a doctor from San Diego, admitted to selling ketamine to another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, from Santa Monica, having diverted it from his former ketamine clinic.

The 54-year-old formally admitted conspiring to distribute the surgical anaesthetic ketamine during a change-of-plea hearing.Plasencia is set to face a trial on March 4 next year, after allegedly using Perry’s live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa to distribute ketamine to the actor from September to October last year for $55,000 (£43,000).

Jasveen Sangha – an alleged drug dealer named by authorities as “the ketamine queen” – will also stand trial, following claims she sold ketamine to Perry for $11,000 (£8,553) in cash. Sangha and Plasencia have both pleaded not guilty to drug charges.

Iwamasa pleaded guilty on August 7 to conspiring to distribute ketamine causing death – admitting to “repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training”, while Erik Fleming pleaded guilty on August 8 to conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

Perry rose to fame on the sitcom Friends, which premiered in 1994, playing the funny and sarcastic Chandler Bing, alongside Matt Le Blanc, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow.