LOS ANGELES - A California doctor was sentenced to 2½ years in prison on Dec 3 for illegally supplying Friends sitcom star Matthew Perry with ketamine, the powerful sedative that caused the actor’s drug overdose death in 2023.

Salvador Plasencia, 44, who operated an urgent-care clinic outside Los Angeles,

pleaded guilty in federal court in July

to four felony counts of illegal distribution of the prescription anesthetic. He surrendered his medical licence in September. He could have faced up to 40 years in prison for the crime.

Perry was found by his live-in assistant

floating face down and lifeless in the jacuzzi

of his Los Angeles home in October 2023. He was 54.

An autopsy report concluded the actor died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” which combined with other factors in causing the actor to lose consciousness and drown.

Ketamine is a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic properties that is sometimes prescribed to treat depression and other psychiatric disorders. It also has seen widespread abuse as an illicit party drug.

Plasencia acknowledged then that he injected Perry with ketamine at the actor’s home and in the back seat of a parked car, and that doing so was not for legitimate medical purposes.

Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse, including the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s NBC television series Friends.

According to federal law enforcement officials at the time charges were brought in the case, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions for treatment of depression and anxiety at a clinic where he bec...