A man with an obsessive three-litre-a- day cola habit drank himself to death, an inquest heard.

Paul Inman’s excessive drinking was driven by him suffering from Aspergers Syndrome which manifested itself in his behaviour, the hearing in Bradford was told yesterday.

The 30-year-old, who lived in a flat at Three Sisters Care Home, in Brow Top Road, Haworth, was found dead in his bedroom by a care worker on March 10 last year.

He was discovered face down on his bed with his glasses folded neatly by his side, said Becky Earwaker who had gone to check on him that morning.

Mr Inman, whom the inquest heard did everything in his life to excess, 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.

The hearing was told 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, could go through two pairs of trainers a week and would walk to nearby shops to buy his cola.

He would drink about two to three litres of the drink a 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.

Adressing assistant deputy Bradford Coroner Dr Domninic 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.