MAUREEN CALLAHAN: No one dares admit the ugly truth about Matthew Perry's ketamine death... and the darkness inside him that he indulged every step of the way

Matthew Perry was nobody's victim.

We're learning a lot about how he died, all of it sordid: The doctors who prosecutors say illegally supplied him with hardcore opiates; the live-in personal assistant who often injected him with drugs; the near-death experience that did nothing to deter his dealers, enablers, or Perry himself.

'Shoot me up with a big one.'

That was Perry's final instruction to his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, on the day he died — having already received two ketamine shots, one at 8.30am and another around 12.30pm that same day.

The third shot, the 'big one' at Perry's demand, was injected by Iwamasa just 40 minutes later. Iwamasa then left to run errands.

Perry, high and alone, climbed into his hot tub.

All of which leads me to wonder: Perhaps he wanted to die?

We're learning a lot about how Matthew Perry died, all of it sordid: The doctors who illegally supplied him with opiates; the live-in personal assistant who often injected him with drugs; the near-death experience that did nothing to deter his dealers, enablers, or Perry himself.

'Shoot me up with a big one'. That was Perry's final instruction to his assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa (pictured), on the day he died - having already received two ketamine shots, one at 8.30am and another around 12.30pm that same day.

To be clear: If guilty, those who are charged with supplying Perry with black-market ketamine, Dr. Salvador Plasencia and Dr. Mark Chavez especially, should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. They exhibited craven greed at the expense of a very sick man.

At one point, Plasencia — who has pleaded not guilty and was known as 'Dr. P' — gloated about aggressively overcharging Perry, texting Chavez: 'I wonder how much this moron will pay.'

But Matthew Perry was hardly a moron. He knew exactly what he was doing.

It was Perry who demanded the ketamine, at whatever price — an eye-popping $55,000 to Plasencia in a single month.

And it was Perry who found another source of supply, street-dealer Erik Fleming, who allegedly connected the actor and his assistant with Jasveen Sangha — the so-called 'Ketamine Queen of LA'.

In the weeks leading to his death, Perry was shot up in the back seat of a car parked outside an aquarium in Long Beach, California.

Days later, he froze up, unable to move or speak, after a home injection by Plascencia — hours after Perry had taken a supervised dose of ketamine at a medical facility.

He was getting injected by Iwamasa six to eight times per day and was found unconscious at least twice.

Matthew Perry felt the rules just didn't apply to him.

'I think about all the doctors and nurses at the UCLA Medical Center for saving my life,' he wrote in his 2022 memoir. 'I am no longer welcome in that hospital for getting caught smoking in there one last time.'

This is the same guy who crashed his Porsche into someone's living room and walked away with no arrest, no criminal charges.

Why wouldn't he feel entitled? He was rarely, if ever, held to account.

The third shot, the 'big one' at Perry's demand, was injected by Iwamasa just 40 minutes later. Iwamasa then left to run errands. Perry, high and alone, climbed into his hot tub.

'Perry wasn't able to deal with the tough love,' one Alcoholics Anonymous source told the New York Post. 'I feel for him, but […] sometimes 'helping' someone is really enabling.'

True. But all evidence points to Perry, at the end, refusing help – instead indulging the very darkest parts of himself.

Perry wrote of his own amazement at being alive: the 55 Vicodin per day, more than 65 detoxes, $9 million spent trying to get sober, 14 surgeries, an exploded colon and 9 months with a colostomy bag.

'Addiction has ruined so much of my life it's not funny,' he wrote. 'I will always have the bowels of a man in his nineties… the scars… my stomach looks like a topographical map of China.'

He knew that touching alcohol or drugs would only end one way.

'I don't have another sobriety in me,' he said. 'It's going to kill me.'

He knew. Perhaps that's why he pushed so many people away.

'Angry and mean,' one friend said of Perry's demeanor in his final days.

He allegedly threw a coffee table at his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz, when she confronted him about cheating with a 19-year-old on Raya and broke off their engagement.

His longtime sober companion, a woman named Morgan Moses, was described by Perry as 'the single nicest person in the world'. He reportedly shoved her into a wall, then onto a bed.

That's to say nothing of the very young women Perry was asking to deliver him drugs. Or the nurse who quit the profession after working with him. Or the ex-girlfriend who threatened to sue him for getting her hooked on drugs and was only silenced by a settlement and an NDA.

Or of allegedly throwing things and punching walls in fits of rage, or telling terrified women in his life: 'If I wanted to hurt you, I would have.'

Perry, it's clear, had problems with women. He also hated himself.

'Most of the time I have these nagging thoughts,' he wrote. 'I'm not enough, I don't matter, I am too needy… I need love, but I don't trust it. If I drop my game, my Chandler, and show you who I really am, you might notice me, but worse, you might notice me and leave me… So, I will leave you first.'

Perry would have turned 55 on Monday. It's quite possible he wanted to die young, or at least knew he would, leaving before doing more harm – to others, maybe, but also to himself, and his legacy.

He allegedly threw a coffee table at his fiancée, Molly Hurwitz (pictured), when she confronted him about cheating with a 19-year-old on Raya and broke off their engagement. He also reportedly shoved his sober companion into a wall, then onto a bed.

It's quite possible he wanted to die young, or at least knew he would, leaving before doing more harm - to others, maybe, but also to himself, and his legacy. (Pictured: with Morgan Moses).

He never seemed to have grown beyond 'Chandler', beyond 'Friends', beyond envisioning himself as Batman — 'Mattman' was his preferred nickname.

He never outgrew his teenage longing for wealth and celebrity as the ultimate drug.

'I was pretty sure that fame would change everything,' he wrote, 'and I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet. I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it.'

Fame, and Perry's attendant wealth, were probably the worst things that could have ever happened to him.

It's how he got away with being a drunk, drug-addled wreck on 'Friends' – admitting to downing at least 16 drinks a day while on set – only sober, by his claim, for one season.

Co-star Jennifer Aniston, per his memoir, confronted him about it.

'We can smell it,' she told him. He was so unintelligible during one table read that the whole cast forced an intervention. But 'Friends' was such a cash cow that it's easy to imagine network executives being unwilling to remove Perry from filming, even temporarily.

'I would show up blindly hungover,' Perry told Diane Sawyer in 2022. 'Like shaking and crazy hungover.'

But the show must go on, right?

After 'Friends', Perry found another show to perform: That of a finally clean, chastened megastar who was just here to help.

He claimed to have been 18 months sober while promoting his memoir, selling a lie that was, perhaps, his last and greatest high.