A 62-year-old man was found dead in his bedroom after overdosing on prescription drugs.

An inquest ruled that Paul Jones, 62, from Malvern, died from an overdose of prescription medication on April 7 this year after he was found by his mum at the home they shared in Lechmere Crescent.

Worcestershire’s senior coroner David Reid ruled that Mr Jones's death was “drug-related” at an inquest in Stourport on July 21 and his death was caused by an overdose of prescription opioids.

Mr Reid said the intentions of Mr Jones on the day of his death were “unclear” and he did not have enough evidence to rule that he wanted to take his own life.

Mr Jones had been taking prescription painkillers for more than a decade after hurting his back in a car accident – an injury then made worse by a stint working for a removal business.

In a statement, mum Sylvia Jones said the last two years of her son’s life had been “very stressful” and his health had suffered following an operation to remove kidney stones.

Mrs Jones said she offered to get medical help for her son, but he would always refuse and spent most of his day in bed.

“Most of the time when he was at home, he was all right,” she said in a statement read by coroner David Reid at the inquest on July 21. “But if he was in a lot of pain, he was not easy to live with. And I didn’t know why he was in terrible pain.”

“He had been ill for several years and hadn’t been working for some time. He had been living with me for years.”

Mrs Jones said she had been cleaning the house on the morning of his death and had spent most of the day out with her daughter.

She returned home later that day, checking on her son a few hours later, when she realised she had not heard from him since the previous afternoon, only to find him lying face down on his bed.

Mrs Jones said her son had “not said anything out of the ordinary” the previous day and had never threatened to take his own life.

A post-mortem found a “very high concentration” of the prescribed drug in his system that would be classed as “excessive” use.

Mr Jones’s doctor told the inquest that there was evidence of “chronic opioid dependence” based on his “persistent drug-seeking behaviours” and “high-dose prescriptions.”

He had regularly refused to respond to doctors at the Whiteacres Medical Centre in Maple Road and failed to respond to a request by the surgery to review his medication.

He was warned by his GP that his medication would be reduced unless he responded, eventually meeting with his doctor a little under a month before his death, where he was described as “disgruntled.”