A former soldier, who was drinking up to 30 cans of lager a day, could not have been fully aware of what he was doing when he fatally drank some methadone, a Coroner has ruled.

Stewart Alan Collings, 31, of Ivegate, Yeadon, was found dead by a former girlfriend last August, the morning after a night of drinking with her and friends.

But toxicology reports showed alcoholic Mr Collings, who was thrown out of the Army’s Light Infantry Division for drug abuse shortly after joining as a teenager, had also drunk some of his friend’s prescription of methadone without her knowledge.

Leeds Coroner’s Court heard from Dr Lisa Barker, a histopathologist at St James’s Hospital in Leeds, who said Mr Collings had 253 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood and 421 micrograms of methadone per litre of blood in his system when he died at the house in Tennyson Street, Guiseley.

The readings meant Mr Collings would have been more than three times over the legal drink-drive limit, while the methadone, described in court as being “just as dangerous as heroin”, was said to be a “huge level” especially for somebody not used to it.

It was also believed Mr Collings, an unemployed bar manager, had tried to take his own life in the past and his mother Ann told the Coroner David Hinchcliff that she was concerned her son might have intended to kill himself.

She said her son was aware that any amount of methadone could cause him to have a fatal heart attack.

But recording a verdict of death due to non-dependent abuse of drugs, Mr Hinchcliff said Mr Collings “wouldn’t have been thinking clearly or rationally”.

He said: “The level of alcohol in his system was huge and would certainly have affected his judgement.

“The huge amount of methadone is almost certainly going to have a fatal outcome and he would have literally gone into a deep sleep. I do not feel there is evidence to support the view of suicide.”