A psychiatrist woke up to find his boyfriend, who overdosed on prescription drugs, unconscious on his living room floor before he later died in hospital, an inquest heard.

Brighton Coroners’ Court heard Dr David Denton discovered his partner Darren Carrington unresponsive and struggling to breathe at their flat in Hove in December last year.

The inquest heard the 39-year-old artist Mr Carrington overdosed on prescription drugs after returning home from a night out.

He slipped into a coma before dying two days later in hospital.

The inquest heard Mr Carrington had been drinking at bar Charles Street Tap in Marine Parade, Brighton.

He then returned home to his flat in Brunswick Terrace around 3am on December 13.

Dr Denton later woke up and found Mr Carrington unresponsive on the living room floor.

He immediately gave him CPR after ringing an ambulance at 7.56am.

Mr Carrington’s partner questioned why it took 17 minutes for the ambulance, which had a problem with its sat nav finding the address, to get to the scene.

Dr Denton told the court: “If in those 17 minutes there was a good chain of care, which was seamless, there might have been a different outcome to what there was.”

Mr Carrington was taken to the Royal Sussex Hospital where he remained unconscious.

He never recovered and died on December 15.

Dr Denton said Mr Carrington had been feeling low at the time and in the months before had previously taken two overdoses.

Pathologist Mark Howard gave a provisional cause of death as respiratory depression caused by a brain injury with a presence of alcohol and drugs.

Toxicologist Amber Crampton found alcohol at three-times the drink drive limit in Mr Carrington’s blood.

There was also a toxic level of prescribed drug codeine and a fatal level of sleeping drug Zoplicone, among other prescription and recreational drugs.

Ms Crampton said: “In combination they [Zoplicone and codeine] could be fatal.

“The fact he didn’t die at the time and went into coma where his brain injury occurred, probably was because he did have tolerance to those drugs.”

Brighton-born Mr Carrington described himself on his Facebook also as a filmmaker, artist and producer of puppetry web series Thatch Close.

The inquest has been adjourned to a later date.