Matthew Perry attended AA meetings at his house

Ozzy Osbourne writes in his new posthumous memoir, Last Ritesthat he’d known Matthew Perry personally, even if he didn’t always remember him.

Osbourne, who died July 22 at 76, was describing what it’s like to be an addict when he mentioned the actor: “Being an addict’s like carrying around an unexploded bomb that you can never put down,” wrote Osbourne, who spoke openly about his struggle with addiction over the years. “Look at the Friends guy, Matthew Perry. He used to come to our house for AA meetings, or so my wife tells me.”

Osbourne, who married Sharon Osbourne in 1982, did remember, though, that Perry was “the funniest, most talented bloke. And he was trying so hard to stay on the right path. Then one day he listened to his addiction telling him it was okay to get loaded, and that was it – game over.”

Perry died Oct. 28, 2023, from a ketamine overdose. He was 54.

“I felt so sad when they said he’d been found in his hot tub, unresponsive, with ketamine in his system,” the rocker wrote. “He’d given everything he had to stay clean. But it wasn’t enough.”

Osbourne’s death was caused by cardiac arrest and “acute myocardial infarction,” the New York Times reported in August. Conditions listed as “joint causes” on his death certificate included coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease with autonomic dysfunction.

In Perry’s case, after his death, Jasveen Sangha was charged in Perry’s death. She pleaded guilty in September in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California to five federal criminal charges, including that she provided the drug used in Perry’s overdose. She’s set to be sentenced in December.

Osbourne wrote in his book that he had once tried ketamine — “not the off-the-books stuff Matthew Perry was supposedly doing, but a controlled medical thing, with a shrink involved.” His wife had tried it and found it helpful.

“She said they were helping her face the demons in her past, and that maybe I should try it too, ‘cos maybe the reason I couldn’t ever stay sober was some buried s–t. So I went down there and gave it a try. It seemed like a better idea than going on psych meds or whatever they were talking about giving me at the time,” Osbourne explained. “They started me on this tiny dose, A microdose, they call it. But the second I felt it kick in – a very small but unmistakable altering of the mind – I was like, oh yeah, I could have some serious fun with this.”

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He said that his reaction was “totally different from the way Sharon reacts to drugs. She can take ’em as needed. I just want to keep doing it until I’m blacked out and dribbling in the corner. But this time, I recognised it immediately for what it was, and I was like, you can f— right off with that, no, absolutely not.”

Perry’s own memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thingwas released in November 2022, less than a year before he died.

Last Rites is available now.