Ozzy Osbourne claimed that Friends star Matthew Perry attended AA meetings at his home before his death, according to posthumous memoir Last Rites.
The late Black Sabbath singer, who died in July at the age of 76, also recalled his own experience with ketamine, the drug that killed Perry by overdose in October 2023 at 54.
Osbourne wrote about Perry in the new book, per Us Magazine: “He used to come to our house for AA meetings, or so my wife tells me. The funniest, most talented bloke. And he was trying so hard to stay on the right path.”
He continued: “Then one day he listened to his addiction telling him it was OK to get loaded, and that was it — game over. I felt so sad when they said he’d been found in his hot tub, unresponsive, with ketamine in his system. He’d given everything he had to stay clean. But it wasn’t enough.”
Elsewhere in the memoir, Osbourne recalls his own experiences trying to get sober. He wrote that he last “fell off the wagon” in 2012, and subsequently attended 90 AA meetings in 90 days at West Hollywood’s AA Log Cabin.
“It helped me, all that AA stuff,” he explained. “Got me started on the way back to being sober. If you’re on your own, the voice in your head is too persuasive.”
At one point, Osbourne considered using a ketamine treatment similar to the one Perry eventually got hooked on in an attempt to “break free” from his own addictions.
Osbourne recalled: “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.’”
The musician wrote that he never took ketamine again, having “recognized it immediately for what it was.”
“For the first time in years, I was able to be really honest with myself,” he wrote. “When I walked out of that ketamine clinic, I told myself I’d never let addiction steal my spirit from me again.”
Osbourne’s death came just weeks after he played his final concert at Villa Park in Birmingham in front of thousands of fans.
He wrote about the moment he finally took to the stage in his new memoir, saying: “Suddenly I was looking out over 42,000 faces, with another 5.8 million watching online. That was when the emotion really hit me. I’d never really taken it on board that so many people liked me.”
