Peaches Geldof, the daughter of Live Aid founder Sir Bob Geldof, who was found dead at her home in April from a heroin overdose, was a former heroin addict who had been taking methadone for 2 1/2 years prior to her death, an inquest was told today.
The coroner was told by a forensic scientist that Peaches' death may, ironically enough, have been partially caused by her reduced tolerance to the drug as a result of reducing her consumption as she attempted to give it up.
Her husband said that he had suspected Peaches was using heroin again. He said that when he confronted her about her use earlier in the year, she had retrieved a stash of heroin and flushed it down the toilet.
Peaches mother, Paula Yates, also died of a heroin overdose. Hours before Peaches died, she sent out a post on Instagram showing a picture of her with her mom when she was a kid.
The inquest into Peaches death was today told that high quality heroin, 61% pure, was discovered hidden in a cupboard at Peaches home with syringes and cotton balls inside a box of sweets.
Street heroin, the court was told, usually has a purity of under 30%.
Her husband, musician Thomas Cohen, 25, said that he last spoke to her shortly before 6 PM on the Sunday before her death but that the following morning, when he was unable to reach her by telephone, he rushed back to their home and found her body.
Her one-year-old son was in the house, but was not in the spare room where Peaches was found dead.
When Mr. Cohen was asked by the coroner whether Peaches had been a heroin addict, he replied, "Yes."
He said that after he had spoken to his wife about her drugs use earlier this year she fetched a stash of heroin from the loft and flushed it.
He also said that he believed the Peaches was having difficulty coming off methadone, which she had been taking for 2 1/2 years.
In an ITV interview with Lorraine Kelly recently, her dad Sir Bob spoke of the difficulty he is having coming to terms with Peaches death.
He said he will sometimes "buckle" when he thinks of her out of the blue.
"I'm walking down the road and suddenly out of the blue there's an awareness of her – and you know, I buckle," he said.
"And I've got to be very careful because walking down the Kings Road there are paps [paparazzi] everywhere so I have to duck off into a lane or something, and blub for a while and then get on with it and that's it, so I'd imagine that will be there for a long time. I mean what else?"
He said: "It's intolerable; it's very hard as everybody must realise, especially if it happened to them too, and what else do you do, you get on with it."
Geldof went on: "I've always done that and being on stage is entirely cathartic, it just clears your head – I just get on a stage and go mad. If I dwell on the words sometimes I find it hard to struggle through the song because they take on whole meanings that I never meant when I wrote them."
