Tragedy of drug addict hairdresser

10:56pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

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A hairdresser whose life was blighted by drug addiction took a fatal hit of heroin just minutes after telling a friend she wanted to get clean.

Pretty Sam Nolan, 22, first smoked cannabis and sniffed glue at the age of 13 and battled drug addiction for about five years.

Her family desperately tried to get her off drugs with her mother spending a staggering £40,000 on rehabilitation, at one stage even moving her to a clinic in Cyprus.

In January this year she injected heroin for the final time after telling a friend in a telephone call she was determined to get clean and seek help.

Today an inquest heard she died as a result of drug dependency.

Recording her verdict, coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley described taking heroin as "like playing Russian roulette".

After the hearing, Miss Nolan's brother Ricky Wright warned drug users to use his sister's story as inspiration to kick their habit.

He said: "The last couple of years of her life she was more off drugs than she was on. She had sustained periods of sobriety and attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

"She was a very loving person, fun and really outgoing and with a great personality. Anyone who knew her would say the same thing.

"She was immensely loved by her family and she was a great sister, auntie and daughter.

"For me personally, I would implore anyone using heroin to see what it did to Sam. It's cut short her life and she was a beautiful girl who had a massive future in front of her. I don't think there is enough help for young addicts."

The hearing at Brighton County Court heard that Miss Nolan, of Coleridge Street, Hove, had spent much of the past two years free of heroin, including a six-month period in rehabilitation in 2006.

In a statement read to the court her mother Carol Nolan described her daughter as having an addictive personality.

After she started using drugs at 13 she then moved onto ecstasy, cocaine, diazepam and started drinking alcohol.

At 16 she started smoking heroin and by the time she was 18 she was injecting the drug.

She had several accidental heroin overdoses and one deliberate in August 2003 when she was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

Mrs Nolan said: "Over the last few days of her life she was using a lot of valium and it was clear the addiction had taken hold. I had to call an ambulance twice before Christmas because she had taken so much."

Miss Nolan, who was training to be a hairdresser, was found dead at her friend Stephen Bartley's flat in Goldstone Villas, Hove, on January 3.

They had met in 2007 before bumping into each other in Blatchington Road, Hove, in the week leading up to new year's eve.

They swapped phone numbers and met up on the afternoon of December 31 and Miss Nolan used crack cocaine and smoked heroin.

The next day he saw her as he walked towards his flat. She told him she had some heroin and asked if he wanted any.

Mr Bartley left to go to the chemist to pick up some needles and a prescription of sleeping tablets.

When he returned to the flat, Miss Nolan injected the heroin and he smoked it. They sat watching television before Mr Bartley went to bed at about 1am.

He took a sleeping tablet and when he woke at about 12.30pm on January 3 he could not wake Miss Nolan.

He called an ambulance but paramedics made no attempt to resuscitate her as it was clear she had been dead for more than two hours.

The court heard that at about 9.30am on January 3 Miss Nolan had spoken to her friend Catherine Margerison for about ten minutes.

She said: "She was slurring her words and was sluggish in her speech but she was still being upbeat in the same way, laughing and making jokes."

She said Miss Nolan told her she had been doing really well but that she was about to have another hit.

She said: "She said she was going to spend time around people who had been well for longer and go to a different fellowship and work with people who were able to support her and help her to get well."

Miss Hamilton-Deeley said she believed Miss Nolan had died within two hours of having this conversation.

A post mortem showed she had died as a result of heroin toxicity which had been exacerbated by diazepam and tamazepam in her system, which stopped her breathing.