Hearing the news of Matt Perry's death? It sucked. Matthew Perry is someone I do not know personally. I did appreciate his work. He was the only thing that made the show Friends tolerable!
Everybody knew young people shouldn't just die in the tub. Of course there is going to be an autopsy. Of course there was going be a finding.
As a physician, particularly one who deals with individuals who, while young, are at risk of death from addiction or psychiatric illness, getting news of the death of a prominent person is always a little bit of weird balancing act. When we're dealing with “public death,” I'm aware of that there is a risk of contagion, and we've covered this problem before on this very newsletter.
When I find out someone has died, and it's in the news, I have the thoughts:
“Oh, God, please let it be a heart attack. Or a stroke. Just not suicide. I'd prefer it being overdose, a little. Just not suicide. Please. Not another one.”
I fully recognize that heart attacks are not good. Nobody wants someone they love to die. Nobody wants a celebrity they admire to die. But it is different when somebody dies in a way that lets us know they were suffering. We don't want more of that. We've had enough of that. The only thing we've had even more too much of is mass school shootings.
One of the other odd things about being the person I am? In my role as a psychiatrist, I will know people who know people. Or sometimes I even knew the person. I didn't know Matt Perry. However, when something happens in the media, and it's tragic, people end up in my office, and they talk about it. Often, that thing has touched them personally. I'm not the kind of psychiatrist who doesn't get referrals of a certain providence, so every time I get to hear about these losses, it may have more relevance to me than most. Because somebody I care for may have to deal with it. Perhaps this is why I'm a little more sensitive than most?
When I heard that Matt had a very high level of ketamine in his system, on the autopsy report, my heart sank. On reflection, however, I think this was a gift. Matt gave a lot of people gifts—he was a master storyteller, and a master at telling how to tell a story.
He was a master of the Hero’s Journey. The hero’s journey is a traditional storytelling structure, which ends with death, resurrection, and return with the elixir. In this case, I think the elixir Matt brought us, since he can't really rise from the dead, is a warning. A warning we need to hear from someone we're apt to listen to.
Be careful.
Be careful with the medical care you receive, be careful with the medical care recommended, be careful with the people you love, and be careful with your heart. Be even more careful with the heart of others. Ketamine was in his system at the time of his death. Ketamine is not perfectly safe. We all know this, as physicians, but it can be popular to think that psychedelic treatments with lower risk profiles are perfectly safe.
They're not. It is not just that they're dangerous, it's that being a person who requires a treatment with a powerful medicine has its own risks. It's those risks we need to respect. We are all at risk, with enough time, of a very certain outcome.
We all die. Not all of us get to tell a story about why we lived. Matt, at least, did that. The hero left us with a warning: be careful, we don't have a lot of time, it's not infinite. Take care of those you love. That care? It might—no matter what you think of yourself—have to include you.