A man who drank three litres of Coca-Cola a day has died from drinking excessive amounts of liquid, a coroner has ruled.
Paul Inman, who had Aspergers syndrome, would leave his care home each day to go out and buy the drink, which he would gulp alongside water.
The huge volume of liquid caused his lungs to swell to four times their natural weight and the 30-year-old died in his sleep, pathologist Dr Deirdre Mckenna was quoted as saying by the Telegraph and Argus.
Although Mr Inman suffered from epilepsy and had to have his cigarettes taken from him so he would not smoke 20 an hour, the pathologist ruled the cause of his death was down to excessive drinking, behaviour motivated by his Aspergers.
His mother said after the inquest: "I've said all this time the cause of it was he drank excessively, absolutely excessively.
"He had done since he was 10 years old. We used to say he had a self-destruct button."
His is not the only death to be linked with an addiction to the drink. A mother-of-eight had a fatal heart attack after drinking up to 10 litres of Coca-Cola a day, an inquest heard in February.
The large quantities of the drink were a “substantial factor” in Natasha Harris’s death, a coroner said.
The 30-year-old New Zealand native, who had a history of ill health, died three years ago.
She was known to have smoked around 30 cigarettes a day, suffered from blood pressure problems and had had her teeth removed because of decay. One or more of her children had been born without tooth enamel, it emerged during the inquest.
Coroner David Crerar said Harris’s addiction to Coca-Cola had given rise to cardiac arrhythmia.