Matthew Perry Foundation launches addiction medicine fellowship

The Matthew Perry Foundation has set up an addiction medicine training fellowship, 15 months after the former Friends star died of a ketamine overdose.

Established with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Matthew Perry Foundation Fellowship in Addiction Medicine allows a doctor to join MGH’s Addiction Medicine Fellowship for the 2025-26 academic year.

Dr Sarah ‘SK’ Kler, a resident at MGH, will take up the role in June, tasked with studying addiction treatment and working toward providing addiction care in future work, the foundation said on Instagram on Tuesday.

In a statement, the chair of the foundation’s board Doug Chapin, and its executive director Lisa Kasteler Calio said Perry “believed deeply in eliminating the stigma surrounding the disease of addiction, and with that in mind, we are proud to lend our name to this important work”.

The Canadian-born actor, who had been taking ketamine six to eight times a day before he died, was found dead at his home in Los Angeles in October 2023.

A medical examiner later ruled that ketamine was the primary cause of death.

Dr Sarah Wakeman, the fellowship’s programme director, warned against continuing to “silo addiction care outside the rest of medical care”.

In comments posted on the hospital’s website, she said marginalising addiction as a social problem outside of the domain of physicians “will only exacerbate stigma and inequities and increase the deadly impact of this epidemic”.

Dr Wakeman called on the medical community to use “effective, holistic, wraparound services across medical settings” to help battle addiction.

MGH “will work in close collaboration with the Matthew Perry Foundation to raise awareness, reduce stigma, and, most importantly, offer hope to those of every age, background, and experience who are struggling with substance use disorder”, she said.

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In October 2024, Dr Mark Chavez, who had been charged in connection with Perry’s death, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to distribute ketamine.

Chavez could face up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in April.

Five people, including Chavez, have been charged in connection with Perry’s death.

The other four are his live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, an acquaintance of the actor named Eric Fleming, another doctor named Salvador Plasencia, known as “Dr P”, and Jasveen Sangha, who was referred to in documents as the “Ketamine Queen”.