A CORONER has said he cannot be sure how a woman from Langford Budville with a history of depression and drug use met her death.

Rachel Rodger, 33, died on June 8 from an acute cardiac failure, but West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose told an inquest in Wellington on Thursday it was impossible to prove what caused it.

The inquest heard Mrs Rodger's husband Brian had woken at 6am to find his wife was not breathing. He phoned for an ambulance and tried to give chest compressions but the inquest heard Mrs Rodger was probably already dead.

A post-mortem found morphine in her system, a drug she had been prescribed for severe spinal pain.

Brian Rodger told the inquest: "Up to the time we married she was using amphetamines and cannabis and prescribed morphine.

"After a while she did manage to come off the morphine completely.

"The only possible thing I can think is that she started taking morphine again that night and had an overdose because she had lost her tolerance to it."

The inquest heard Mrs Rodger endured a troubled upbringing and had several stormy relationships before meeting Brian Rodger, who she married last April.

The inquest was also told she was suffering from depression and had met her psychiatrist in Taunton the day before her death.

Recording an open verdict on Mrs Rodger's death, Michael Rose said: "I cannot say with certainty what the cause of death was.

"It was probably a death of natural causes but I must return an open verdict that the medical cause of was unascertained."