Column: The arrests in Matthew Perry’s death expose a system built to prey on addicts

Last fall, the death of “Friends� star Matthew Perry was met with a collective howl of grief.

Now, with the arrest of five people charged with involvement in the ketamine overdose that killed him, that howl should turn to one of anger.

According to U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, allegedly worked with Jasveen Sangha, a drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen,� to supply Perry with the drug, which Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, injected into the actor several times on the day of his death.

Ketamine, once known as the party drug Special K, is a sedative that many doctors now use to alleviate depression and treat substance abuse. Law enforcement officials said Perry, who began supervised ketamine treatments for depression and anxiety at a local clinic and became addicted to the drug, subsequently sought outside sources for it; the amount of the drug found in his system at the time of his death was far greater than prescribed amounts, so high that it acted as general anesthesia would.

The defendants, Estrada said during a news conference Thursday, systematically provided Perry with dangerous amounts of the drug: They “took advantage of Mr. Perry’s addiction to enrich themselves� and were “more interested in profiting off Mr. Perry than caring about his well being.�

At 54, Perry was a beloved figure. Long known for his ability to land a one-liner with a style that was both comedically ruthless and deeply human, he was also admired for acknowledging his own failings and vulnerability. For months before his death, he had been promoting his best-selling memoir “Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,� which chronicled, in excruciating but often darkly humorous detail, his years-long and physically catastrophic battle with addiction and his subsequent journey toward sobriety.

After so many years of self-destructive behavior, Perry seemed to be doing so well, eager to help others struggling with addiction. How, many wanted to know, could such a terrible reversal occur?

For recovering addicts and those who love them, the immediate answer seemed painfully clear: Although it can be successfully treated, addiction is a disease of the mind and body that is never cured. No amount of rehab or pharmaceutical counter-agents can prevent a relapse; achieving and maintaining sobriety requires daily effort.

And sometimes addiction wins.

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But Perry clearly wanted to be, was actively trying to be, sober. He said he had been “clean� for more than a year and there were no other drugs in his system when he died. I will leave it to medical experts to debate the efficacy of treating an addict with ketamine, which studies have indicated provides necessary relief for major depression. But one hallmark of addiction is the belief that, if one is good, three (or five, or 19) will be better.

Especially if there are people more than willing to exploit that impulse for profit. Including those with medical degrees.

Texts between Plasencia and Chavez make their motives nauseatingly clear. According to court records, Plasencia texted Chavez: “I wonder how much this moron will pay� and “Lets find out.� The doctors distributed 20 vials of ketamine to Perry, charging him $2,000 for a vial that cost Chavez $12, authorities said.

Too often, our view of overdose begins and ends with the victim and, perhaps, the person who supplied the drugs. Two dealers were convicted in the death of rapper Mac Miller, who died after taking oxycodone pills that had been laced with fentanyl. Likewise, Cathy Smith was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after she injected the mixture of heroin and cocaine that ended John Belushi’s life. As was Dr. Conrad Murray, who gave Michael Jackson a fatal dose of propofol. But all of those deaths, and convictions, were just the visible end of a very long process involving very many people. Which is true, in some way, for every single drug that ends, or ruins, a life.

It would seem that Perry knew he was taking ketamine, if not recreationally then at least recklessly. He was paying way above market value and having it administered unsupervised. But ketamine, as my colleagues Salvador Hernandez and Richard Winton reported earlier this year, has become hot stuff among the rich and famous. It is even available in various direct-to-consumer forms online.

Unlike, say, heroin or OxyContin.

As the arrests in Perry’s case make clear, addiction, and bad choices made by an addict, are not the only answer to “How did this happen?�

Neither addiction nor overdose have any regard for tax bracket, but when a beloved celebrity dies the attention can provide an opportunity. And not just for an examination of how the ability to get anything you want if you are willing to pay for it is a double-edged sword, though the money and fame that allowed Perry to access quality, discreet, medical care and rehabilitation services also made him vulnerable to players in a black market that exploits those with a lot of ready cash.

These arrests make it clear that tragic deaths like Perry’s are not just the result of one person making a questionable choice and another person enabling it. Many people made many choices that brought us to this point. The dealers who initially sold the ketamine, the doctors who bought and resold it, the intimates who procured and injected it.

Just as Perry’s book, and then his death, forced us to re-engage in conversation about the life-threatening complexities of addiction, Thursday’s arrests should provoke a closer look at the ease with which a potentially life-threatening drug can be obtained and abused, often under the eye of non-users who are willing to endanger people’s lives — and in Perry’s case end it — to make a quick buck.

This time we should not be content with mourning the victim and punishing the nearest perpetrator. This time, we should condemn every link in the damn chain.