Man with a three-litre-a-day cola habit drinks himself to death
A man with a three-litre-a-day cola habit drank himself to death after his lungs swelled to four times their normal weight, an inquest heard.
Paul Inman had a three-litre-a-day cola habit Photo: Alamy
By Alice Philipson
11:55AM BST 29 May 2013
Paul Inman, 30, made constant trips to his local shop to buy the fizzy drink and also used to down glasses of water to quench his feeling of thirst.
But the huge quantities of liquid he consumed caused his lungs to swell and he was found dead in his bedroom by a care worker.
Mr Inman, who suffered from Asperger's syndrome, lived in a flat at the Three Sisters Care Home, Haworth, where he was discovered face down on his bed with his glasses folded neatly by his side in March last year.
Mr Inman had seemed well when staff saw him going into his room the night before. He usually locked his door but on this occasion had not.
Detectives and scenes-of-crimes officers who went to investigate the sudden death found there were no suspicious circumstances.
Mr Inman's excessive drinking was driven by him suffering from Aspergers Syndrome, the hearing in Bradford, West Yorks, was told.
The inquest also heard Mr Inman never stayed still, care staff had to keep his cigarettes so he would not smoke 20 in one hour, he would pace up and down continually and could go through two pairs of trainers in a week.
He would also drink about two to three litres of cola per day, plus quantities of water.
When he was 17, Mr Inman was diagnosed with schizophrenia but when his case was reviewed in 2008, doctors then diagnosed that he suffered from Aspergers – a form of autism.
Six months before his death he moved to the Three Sisters home in Haworth where he was extremely happy, said his mother Alison Inman, who attended the hearing with his father David.
A post-mortem examination found that Mr Inman's lungs were three to four times the weight they should have been, said pathologist Dr Deirdre Mckenna.
She ruled out the cause of that being epilepsy and a heart attack and put it down instead to his excessive drinking with the root of that habit stemming from him being an Aspergers' sufferer.
He was already known to have had low sodium levels because of the volume of fluids that he drank.
Addressing assistant deputy Bradford Coroner Dr Dominic Bell, Mrs Inman said after hearing Dr McKenna's report: "I'm not a pathologist but I made that decision two hours after he died. I've said all this time the cause of it was he drank excessively, absolutely excessively. He had done since he was ten years old.
"We used to say he had a self-destruct button."
Dr Bell recorded a verdict that Mr Inman had died of natural causes.
