Salvador Plasencia has pleaded not guilty to distributing the drug that killed the Friends star last year.
Matthew Perry PHOTO: Archive
A doctor accused of illegally supplying Friends star Matthew Perry with ketamine before he died of an accidental overdose last year plans to return to practice as early as this week.
Dr. Salvador Plasencia’s lawyer confirmed to NBC News that the doctor plans to resume work at the emergency clinic he runs in Calabasas, a city in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, writes theguardian.com.
Last week, Plasencia pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and was released on $100,000 bail. A judge overseeing his case ruled that Plasencia must display a poster on the door of his clinic informing potential patients of his pending trial.
Plasencia’s patients are also required to sign a form stating that they understand the charges against him and consent to treatment at each visit.
Prosecutors say Perry was injected with ketamine at least 20 times in the days before his death from intoxication and drowning in a hot tub last October. In the hours before his death, he was injected three times.
On the latter occasion, Perry allegedly told his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, to “inject me with a big one” and prepare the bathtub. The assistant administered the dose to Perry and left home to run errands, according to the documents. When he came back, Perry was face down in the water.
Prosecutors allege that Plasencia supplied Iwamasa with ketamine. He is also accused of injecting Perry with the drug and teaching the assistant how to administer it.
Perry underwent ketamine treatments to treat depression, but is believed to have sought alternative sources of the drug when the clinic involved began restricting dosages. Prosecutors said the actor obtained the drug illegally, outside of scheduled doses, as part of an addiction “out of control”.
The drug is popular as an alternative treatment, with users extolling the sensation of going down a rabbit hole into an egoless state.
Iwamasa pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death and one count of administering injections without medical training. According to prosecutors, Perry was scheduled for a ketamine infusion with a doctor on Oct. 14, two weeks before he died on Oct. 28.
That day, the nurse contacted Plasencia for more medicine, and the doctor agreed to meet at Perry’s home and administered “high dose ketamine”. But Perry had a reaction to the extra dose and his body began to “freezing”.
According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, Plasencia left additional vials of ketamine at the actor’s home. But Perry wanted more and instructed Iwamasa to contact another supplier.
