A 42-year-old man who was found dead in his High Wycombe home died as a result of multiple drug intoxication; an inquest has heard.

Gary Burke was found by police officers on November 11 last year, after his mother and aunt could not gain entry to his property when they went to check on him.

Mr Burke had been hospitalised just two days before, and in a statement read out to the coroner, his mother said that after picking him up from hospital, “Gary was weak and struggling to walk - he said that he wanted to go to sleep.”

His mother and aunt then visited Gary again on the Saturday, and he did not leave his room because of the pain that he was in. When Gary was visited on Sunday morning, he would not open the door and told his mother out of his window that he “did not feel well enough to see her”.

Later in the day, when his mother and aunt returned, there was no response from inside and police were called to the scene to gain entry to the property.

Attending officer PC Giles told the inquest that the property was “fully secure, we could not get through the doors or the windows. Officers spent a considerable amount of time trying to force the door open.”

PC Giles confirmed to Senior Coroner Crispin Butler that there was “every indication that the property was secured from the inside.”

When the police entered the property, Mr Burke was sadly found unresponsive and was pronounced dead shortly after.

The coroner also heard a statement from Sharon Ebbetts, a counselling psychologist at Healthy Minds Bucks, where it was confirmed that in phone calls with Mr Burke in the months leading up to his death, he had “seemed disorientated and was slurring his words.”

Mr Burke also “could not indicate what help he wanted, but he did not want to attend group therapy sessions” the court heard.

In the weeks before his death, Healthy Minds had been trying to arrange a one on one consultation with Mr Burke, but tragically he was found dead before the appointment could take place.

Senior Coroner Crispin Butler confirmed that Mr Burke died unintentionally as a result of multiple drug toxicity, with morphine, codeine, alprazolam and buprenorphine found in his system.

Mr Butler concluded that the death was “a tragic accident, all the more so because that help may have been forthcoming.”