Matthew Perry’s tragic end and his eerie final Instagram post

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Perry was found dead Saturday afternoon at his home, just a few hours after finishing a two-hour game of pickleball. Sources told TMZ that he was found in a hot tub, and there were no illegal drugs found at the scene.

However, several perscription drugs were found in the house. “Authorities found anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs and a COPD drug in the house,” law enforcement sources told TMZ on Sunday.

The actor died of an apparent drowning with police telling The Associated Press that officers had gone to an address on his block “for a death investigation of a male in his 50s.”

Emergency dispatch audio obtained by TMZ, hears of someone referring to a “rescue 23” and “drowning,” in response to the incident.

In a statement to PEOPLE released Sunday afternoon, Perry’s family said they were “heartbroken” by his death.

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“We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of our beloved son and brother,” the family said. “Matthew brought so much joy to the world, both as an actor and a friend.”

For 10 seasons, Perry starred opposite Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer on Friends, which remains one of the most popular sitcoms in television history.

As Chandler Bing, the Emmy-nominated Perry played a character who was roommates with LeBlanc’s Joey and pals with Schwimmer’s Ross and was always quick with the one-liners.

In his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry wrote about his time on the show — at the height of which he and his co-stars earned $1 million-per-episode — and said the role was one he was born to play.

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“It was as if someone had followed me around for a year, stealing my jokes, copying my mannerisms, photocopying my world-weary yet witty view of life. One character in particular stood out to me: it wasn’t that I thought I could ‘play’ Chandler. I ‘was’ Chandler,” he wrote in his memoir.

But behind the scenes, Perry struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, a battle that began when he was just a teenager. He told the BBC radio 2 in 2016 that he didn’t remember filming seasons 3 through 6 of Friends. At one point he was consuming 55 Vicodin pills a day and washing it down with a quarter bottle of vodka.

“You can track the trajectory of my addiction if you gauge my weight from season to season — when I’m carrying weight, it’s alcohol; when I’m skinny, it’s pills. When I have a goatee, it’s lots of pills,” he wrote.

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At one point Aniston confronted him about his drinking in the midst of filming episodes.

“I should have been the toast of the town, but I was in a dark room meeting with nothing but drug dealers and completely alone,” Perry said in an October 2022 interview with Diane Sawyer.

He said his castmates were supportive of him during his addiction struggles, with Aniston continuing to check in on him years after the show’s series finale aired in 2004.

“(They) were understanding, and they were patient,” he recalled in an interview last year with PEOPLE. “It’s like penguins. Penguins, in nature, when one is sick, or when one is very injured, the other penguins surround it and prop it up. They walk around it until that penguin can walk on its own. That’s kind of what the cast did for me.”

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Still, the cycle of abuse continued long after the show ended and resulted in Perry’s colon exploding in 2018.

“The doctors told my family that I had a 2% chance to live,” he recalled in an interview with PEOPLE. “I was put on a thing called an ECMO machine, which does all the breathing for your heart and your lungs. And that’s called a Hail Mary. No one survives that.”

After emerging from a coma, Perry — who also starred for three seasons on a reboot of The Odd Couple and several other short-lived series after Friends ended — had to wear a colostomy bag for nearly a year afterwards.

“My therapist said, ‘The next time you think about taking OxyContin, just think about having a colostomy bag for the rest of your life,’” Perry told PEOPLE. “And a little window opened, and I crawled through it, and I no longer want OxyContin.”

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In 2020, Page Six reported that Perry skirted death again when the actor’s heart stopped for five minutes after doctors administered propofol that interacted badly with the hydrocodone in his system.

“I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

But with the release of his book last fall, Perry had turned the page and was looking ahead to finding everlasting love and becoming a father after splitting with literary manager Molly Hurwitz in 2021.

“I’m not run by the fear I used to be run by so everything’s kind of different. I’m feeling more confident and I’m not afraid of love anymore, so the next girl I go out with better watch out,” he told PEOPLE.

Perry knew the kind of woman he was looking for, telling the publication he wanted to be with “somebody who has their own wealth.”

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“A sense of humour, beautiful inside and out, caring. This is really important, somebody who can have a back and forth with me,” he said of his ideal mate.

“Somebody who’s self-supporting. In every way, but monetarily especially because I got burned a few times by women who wanted my money, not really caring about me,” he added.

Perry also spoke openly about wanting to become a dad, declaring, “I think I’d be a great father.”

“I think I’d be great. I really do,” he said in his interview with PEOPLE. “I grew up with a lot of little kids around me, and that’s probably why, but I can’t wait.”

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X: @markhdaniell

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