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Drugs victim had been trying to kick habit
A PLASTERER who had stopped taking drugs died from an accidental overdose after his tolerance to them went down, an inquest heard this week.
Gilbert Thomas had tried to kick his habit and had succeeded, a St Pancras inquest was told on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old died after taking a relatively small amount of heroin and cocaine at a flat in Birnham Road, Finsbury Park, in September. While the levels he took would not have fatally harmed him in the past, his body was no longer used to them, coroner Dr Andrew Reid said.
Mr Thomas’s aunt, Linda Thomas, said: “He was trying to get himself straight and on several occasions he did. He did fall back but this last period of his life he was doing very, very well.”
She said her nephew had a girlfriend and seemed “very happy” when she saw him two weeks before his death at a family party.
“He said to me: ‘I love you auntie Linda, I love you very much,’” she added.
On the morning of his death, Mr Thomas was found collapsed in the living room by the tenant of the flat, Rosemary Scott.
According to coroner’s officer Lee Gronow, he turned up at Ms Scott’s flat at 3am “smelling of alcohol and having very dilated eyes”. The following morning she left the house to walk her dogs and when she returned she found him lying unconscious next to a piece of burned silver paper, commonly associated with drug taking. “She later returned and was unable to wake him,” Mr Gronow added.
An autopsy revealed there were no marks of violence on his body and he had no natural disease that would have killed him. “The levels of ethanol, free morphine and cocaine are not individually particularly high, but in combination they would have caused a degree of toxicity,” said Dr Reid.
He added that Mr Thomas was not dependent on drugs and had “lost a degree of tolerance” to them. “If he was still dependent, much higher levels would have been required to cause his death,” he said.
Verdict: non-dependent abuse of drugs. |
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