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

Paul Inman’s excessive drinking was driven by him suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome – a form of autism – that manifested itself in his behaviour, the Bradford hearing was told on Tuesday.

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.

Police were called, but 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; he 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 but he did not drink alcohol, it was heard.

When he was 17, Mr Inman was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but when his case was reviewed in 2008, doctors diagnosed he suffered from Asperger’s.

Six months before his death, he moved to the Three Sisters home in Haworth where he was extremely happy, settling down and making progress, said his mother, Alison Inman, who attended the hearing with his father, David.

A post-mortem examination found 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 Asperger’s sufferer.

He was already known to have had low sodium levels because of the volume of fluids he drank.

Addressing assistant deputy Bradford Coroner, Dr Domninic Bell, Mrs Inman said after hearing Dr McKenna’s report: “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. We tried to regulate it but it was out of our jurisdiction.”

Dr Bell recorded a verdict Mr Inman had died of natural causes.