Matthew Perry’s Mom Says He Was A ‘Lonely Soul’: ‘I Couldn’t Help Him’

Matthew Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, has opened up about the grief that her family has faced since losing her son to addiction one year ago. 

Along with Matthew’s mother, his step-father Keith Morrison, and his step-siblings, Caitlin, Emily, and Madeline talked to Savannah Guthrie in an interview with Today. 

“I’m a very lucky woman, but there was one glitch, there was one problem that I couldn’t, I couldn’t conquer it,” Suzanne said. “I couldn’t help him.”

Thinking back to Matthew’s decade-long battle with addiction, Suzanne got emotional thinking about his struggle to get sober prior to his death. 

“The one thing I have to learn [is] very hard to do, and that’s … You got to stop blaming yourself because it tears you up,” she admitted.

Guthrie described the Friends star as the kind of “light up the room personality.” 

While his family tended to agree, Suzanne made sure to shed light on the actor’s inner turmoil. 

 “But it must be said, I think, that he was also very lonely in his soul,” Suzanne said. “The sort of exterior that people know about hid an insecure, often very sad guy.” 

Since losing Matthew, the family has started The Matthew Perry Foundation of Canada in order to try and aid others who are battling drug addiction. 

“Even when he was struggling in dark times, we were always proud of him,” said Caitlin, the executive director of the foundation. “We were always proud of the fact that he kept fighting, and that he made it a big focus of his life to help other people.” 

Perry was 54 when he died after being found in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles on October 28, 2023. His death was later determined to be a ketamine overdose. 

Prior to his death, Matthew said he was sober and using ketamine – an anesthetic used to treat depression and pain – to help him through recovery. 

“We didn’t know how much of it he was taking,” Morrison confessed, adding that it “hadn’t turned into something he couldn’t control.”

Several doctors and drug dealer have been charged with helping to provide Perry with ketamine.

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