Matthew Perry’s Sister Mia Tearfully Speaks Out in First Interview

Matthew Perry’s sister, Mia, broke down while describing the grief of losing her brother and the anger she felt toward his addiction.

The actor, best known for playing Chandler Bing on Friends, died in 2023 at 54 after drowning in a jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home following a ketamine overdose.

Five years earlier, Matthew had come close to death when his colon burst after opioid overuse. Doctors gave him only a two per cent chance of survival.

Mia was Matthew’s power of attorney at the time. She reflected on the traumatic period in the Netflix docuseries The One About Matthew Perry.

Mia recalled: ‘In some ways, I was really honoured to be able to make these sorts of choices for my brother, but I also felt this really intense anxiety and pressure.

‘I was away from my baby, postpartum and hormonal, and barely functioning.’

Mia said doctors were especially concerned because Matthew was experiencing drug withdrawal while in hospital.

‘There’s so much grief that family members and friends have to sit with when their loved ones are suffering from substance abuse,’ Mia said.

‘There are many layers and aspects to grief, and one of them is denial. I would often retreat into that place of denial.’

Fighting back tears, Mia continued: ‘It’s a mixture of feeling mad at myself for forgetting that reality, even for a few minutes, and certainly feeling angry at him.

‘You did this to yourself. I just had a baby; you’re supposed to be an uncle right now. It’s really, really, really hard.’

‘We had a lot of near-misses, overdoses and car crashes. There had been all sorts of things, but this was the only time when so many people were saying, “We have no idea if he’s coming out of this.”’

Matthew ultimately survived, and Mia said he broke down in tears when she explained what had happened.

Mia added: ‘Our job isn’t to try to make the feeling go away. Our job is to sit with the person and allow them to have the feeling, without making them go through it by themselves.’

Tragically, Matthew continued to struggle with addiction until his untimely death in 2023.

Mia now says she has ‘learned how to hold gratitude and grief simultaneously. That was an overall summary of how I felt watching the documentary.’

Director Mary Robertson said of the series: ‘Mia was able to give voice to experiences that are hers and hers alone, but there’s clearly a universal aspect to these experiences.’

Elsewhere in the series, Mia revealed the extreme lengths her brother went to in an effort to get sober.

The 17 Again star went to rehab 15 times and attended 6,000 AA meetings as he battled lifelong addictions to alcohol, prescription opioids (such as Vicodin and OxyContin), and later ketamine. 

Psychotherapist Mia reflected: ‘My brother would talk about that feeling of emptiness or loneliness that he couldn’t quite fill.

‘He spent $7million trying to get sober. That’s how seriously he took his disease.’

Matthew’s drinking began with beer and cheap wine when he was only 14 years old, and by his 21st birthday party it was already showing signs of being out of control. 

He developed an addiction to Vicodin, a painkiller he took following a jet-ski accident soon after he joined the show. The maximum daily dosage is eight tablets but, by the end of the third season of Friends, he was swallowing around 55 a day. 

In 1995, a former girlfriend with whom he was still friendly insisted he see a doctor about his addictions.

This led to the first of many stints in rehab. But even as he left, he knew he was going to drink again – lasting only nine weeks before once again hitting the bottle.

In 2018, his addiction to opioids had left him with pneumonia and a burst colon. Shortly after being admitted to hospital he slipped into a coma, which would last two weeks. 

When he came round he discovered he had been fitted with the colostomy bag he had to wear for the next nine months. 

Yet even this was not enough to keep him sober.

Two years later his heart stopped beating for five minutes after doctors at a luxury rehab facility in Switzerland administered a sedative which interacted with the opioids in his ravaged body.

They managed to resuscitate him but broke eight ribs in the process, forcing him to pull out of a role alongside Meryl Streep in the film Don’t Look Up. 

After his tragic death, five people were convicted for their part in his overdose, including the actor’s drug counsellor, his ‘Ketamine Queen’ drug dealer Jasveen Sangha, and two doctors.

Matthew’s long-term assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, who injected the Friends star ‘repeatedly’ with ketamine on the day he died, was sentenced to more than three years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, causing death.

The One About Matthew Perry is on Netflix now. 

If you are struggling with substance abuse in the UK, talk to FRANK on 0300 123 6600. In the US contact Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on 1-800-662-4357