A father-of-two died after taking a heroin substitute he found on a friend’s doorstep, an inquest heard.

Painter and decorator Wayne O’Connor, 30, was found dead on his bed in a room of the North Oxford house he had only moved into a week before.

A bottle of the heroin substitute methadone was discovered on the floor of his room, in Southdale Road, Cutteslowe.

The drug had been prescribed to a friend of Mr O’Connor, Jamil Shishtawi.

The inquest heard that it was likely Mr O’Connor had picked up a bottle of the drug which had been bundled up with a coat and left outside the flat of Mr Shishtawi’s girlfriend Nicola Wiles, two days before Mr O’Connor’s death.

The couple had fallen out and were not on speaking terms, so Ms Wiles had decided to leave three bottles of methadone for Mr Shishtawi to collect, along with a coat.

Ms Wiles told the inquest in Oxford: “Jamil wanted his prescription which he had locked in a cupboard in my flat. I didn’t want to see him in the situation we were in.

“I put the coat and the bottles outside my flat door in the hallway where no-one would be able to have access apart from the people who lived there.”

The coroner heard that Mr O’Connor had been at Ms Wiles’s flat while she prepared the bundle for Mr Shishtawi. He left that evening, but the next morning Ms Wiles discovered that while the coat was still outside the flat door, one of the bottles had disappeared.

She told the inquest: “I don’t know if he (Mr O’Connor) saw what I was doing.

“He seemed to be absorbed in his own situation.”

Ms Wiles and Mr Shishtawi had befriended Mr O’Connor about three months prior to his death on April 13 this year.

Mr O'Connor revealed to Ms Wiles that he had split up with his partner and was heavily dependent on alcohol, particularly when stressed.

Ms Wiles, of Meadow Gardens, Jackson Road, said: “I did have some conversations with him that were very negative.

“I would say his disposition oscillated between depression on one day, anxiety the next, happy the next day and back to anxiety the next.

“When I say anxiety, I mean someone sitting on the sofa shaking, not in any shape or form able to cope.”

Mr Shishtawi did not attend the inquest but in a statement he said: “I have never given Wayne any of my methadone and I have never been to his room. Wayne has never been with me when I picked it up and I do not know how it got into his flat.”

In a statement, Mr O’Connor’s landlord Giancarlo Tosti, who found the body, said: “Another resident told me he (Mr O'Connor) might have a drink problem.

“I knocked on his door but there was no response.”

Tests on a blood sample taken from Mr O’Connor after his death revealed he had alcohol levels of 169mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood, twice the drink-driving limit, and high levels of methadone.

Oxfordshire deputy coroner Dr Richard Whittington recorded that Mr O’Connor had died as a result of misusing drugs and alcohol.

He said: “This man, it appears, had taken the initiative to use someone else's drugs, a very dangerous thing to do.”