Man overdosed on girlfriend’s birthday

Flax Bourton Coroner’s Court heard last week how Nathun Stacey, aged 20, from South Side, Weston, had gone out the night before his death to see a friend, returning home at 11.30pm.

His girlfriend Michelle Weeks had been in a relationship with him for two and a half years.

For over a year he had been complaining about back pain since being diagnosed with a protruding disc.

He climbed into bed beside his girlfriend that night and started snoring, forcing her to leave the room as she had to leave for work early the next morning.

But when she went back into the room she found him near death in his bed.

In a statement read out, she said: “As soon as I saw Nathun I knew at once.

“He was very pale and very cold when I touched him.”

She rang for an ambulance immediately and began chest compressions.

He was taken to hospital in a critical state and died later that morning, June 22.

He was found to have overdosed on ketamine and prescription painkillers.

Since April 2010 he had made a series of visits to his GP and the hospital and was given both painkillers and treated with physiotherapy.

He had to be signed off work for months with the pain, which was said to be making him depressed.

He felt that the drugs he was prescribed were not treating his pain.

In April 2011, he was admitted to Weston General Hospital for an overdose and was found to have taken ketamine, tramadol, morphine and diazepam.

He was then prescribed co-codamol and sleeping tablets.

Flax Bourton Coroner Terrence Moor said: “He was in terrific discomfort and wasn’t able to work and he found that debilitating and depressing.

“He foolishly took ketamine and other painkillers including morphine and that is what caused respiratory arrest.”

He returned a verdict of non-dependent abuse of drugs.

He said: “He was not an abuser but someone who was abusing therapeutic drugs for his pain and sadly it has led to his death.