A DRUG addict died from a heroin overdose despite his friend’s desperate efforts to save him, an inquest heard.

Christopher Cunliffe was found slumped on the sofa next to a used syringe at his friend’s home in Hollybrook Road, Shirley, Southampton.

An inquest heard how the 36-year-old’s friend Simon Davis immediately dialled 999 and tried to revive him by injecting the opiate-countering drug Naxalone before paramedics arrived.

But he was later pronounced dead at Southampton General Hospital.

The inquest heard Mr Cunliffe, of Ranelagh Gardens, Southampton, had a long history of drug use.

A post-mortem by pathologist Jeffrey Theaker revealed quantities of opiates morphine, codeine and noscapine and traces of cocaine in his body. Southampton coroner Keith Wiseman recorded a drugs dependency determination.