Matthew Perry ‘went to Ozzy Osbourne’s home for AA meetings’ before death

In his posthumous memoir Last Rites, Ozzy Osbourne reveals that Friends actor Matthew Perry attended AA meetings at his home.

The Black Sabbath rocker, who died on July 22 aged 76, revealed that the actor tried his very best to get clean before he died of an accidental ketamine overdose in his hot tub in October 2023, for which five people were charged.

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.’

Perry spent many years being a vocal advocate for sobriety, having been notoriously open about his own addiction struggles.

In 2018 he was hospitalised after his colon burst from opioid misuse.

‘The doctors told my family that I had a two percent chance to live,’ the star told People Magazine in 2022.

‘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.’

In his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, & the Big Terrible Thing, he wrote of the drug that killed him, as per Entertainment Tonight: ‘Taking K is like being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel. But the hangover was rough. Ketamine was not for me.’

Ozzy famously struggled with various addictions over his lifetime.

In the memoir, he also described 2012 as the year he last ‘fell off the wagon’ after wife Sharon Osbourne ‘busted’ him.

Ozzy explained how the X Factor star, who recently thanked her followers for their kindness in the wake of her husband’s death, sold cars bought by the frontman during his last bender.

The Paranoid hitmaker then attended 90 meetings in 90 days at the AA Log Cabin in West Hollywood.

‘It helped me, all that AA stuff,’ he recalled. ‘Got me started on the way back to being sober. If you’re on your own, the voice in your head is too persuasive.’

However, Ozzy’s health struggles – including a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2020; issues stemming from his quad bike crash as well as a fall in 2019 which led to multiple surgeries – saw him take up some substances again to deal with the pain over the year before his death.

‘I am happier, but I am not completely sober. I use a bit of marijuana from time to time,’ he said on his Madhouse Chronicles podcast in October.

Ozzy praised Sharon as his motivation to steer clear of harder drugs, saying she ‘kicks his butt all the time’ and would ‘make life so difficult’ if he fell into old habits.

‘Even with marijuana she will f*****g find it and get rid of it,’ he continued.

He went on to explain that he no longer attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but ‘maybe he should’ after they previously ‘got him sorted out to a certain degree.’

Meanwhile, rocker Ozzy was so addled with drugs that one 1989 morning he woke up in a prison cell accused with trying to strangle Sharon the night before.

Ozzy was told he was under suspicion of attempted murder with no memory of the events. Sharon dropped charges, explaining how she didn’t recognise her husband in his drug-fuelled state.

According to The Sun on Sunday, Sharon said: ‘I had no idea who was sat across from me on the sofa but it wasn’t my husband. He goes to a stage where he gets that look in his eyes, the shutters were down and I just couldn’t get through to him.

‘And he just said, “We’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die”.

‘He was calm – very calm – then suddenly he lunged across at me and just dived on me and started to choke me.

‘He got me down on the ground on top of me and I was feeling for stuff on the table. I felt the panic button and I just pressed it and the next thing I know, the cops were there.’

Sharon and Osbourne tied the knot in Hawaii on July 4, 1982 having met in the 70s when she was 18 and her dad was Black Sabbath’s manager.In 1979, Sharon’s father fired Ozzy from the band due to substance issues.

After Ozzy spent months in a hotel using drugs, until Sharon stepped in and helped him recover, later becoming his manager.

Ozzy previously credited Sharon for saving his life.

‘Truly, without my wife at my side, I wouldn’t be here, without any doubt,’ he told Australian music guru Billy Pinnell.

‘I wouldn’t be alive, I wouldn’t be singing,’ he said. ‘She saved my life every day.’

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