A coroner has voiced fears about the growing acceptance of ecstasy use after a woman drowned in the sea while high on the dance drug.

East Sussex coroner Alan Craze was speaking at an inquest into the death of carer Charlotte Root-Reed, 27.

High levels of ecstasy were found in her body when it was pulled from the sea at Eastbourne.

Mr Craze said: "What worries me is two things - firstly, that the level of use of ecstasy gradually appears to be rising, and secondly, that people are being killed as a result of the use of ecstasy.

"All the newspapers and all the evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, tends to support the view that the use of ecstasy is rising, as is the acceptance of it.

"I want to take this opportunity, although I cannot bring Charlotte back, to send a message if I may to people taking ecstasy on a recreational basis that it is a dangerous drug and people end up dying as a result."

Miss Root-Reed had taken the drug during an evening with friend Ian McCormack, who she was visiting in Eastbourne from her home in Buckinghamshire.

The pair had enjoyed a night out, taking a number of ecstasy pills at a night club before returning with two other men to Mr McCormack's bedsit on February 25 this year.

They sat up until 8am smoking cannabis joints but after the two men had left Miss Root-Reed suddenly got up.

Mr McCormack said: "I thought she was going to the toilet. I fell asleep and a few hours later I tried ringing her mobile phone and then the hospital because I was worried.

"But later I looked in her handbag and found her phone in there. The longer it went the more worried I got."

Hours later Miss Root-Reed's body was pulled from freezing water near Sovereign Harbour. She had large stones in her body-warmer pockets.

Pathologist Dr Christopher Mason said although the amount of ecstasy she had taken was high it was not the cause of her death.

He added: "I think she drowned before a physiological deterioration took place.

"It is quite likely that the level she had in her made her decision-making not normal. I feel that at that level any action she may have taken would have been influenced by drugs."

The inquest heard that previously, Miss Root-Reed had slashed her wrists and neck and had suffered serious injuries after falling from a five-metre wall in France in an apparent suicide bid.

Her mother Pamela Root-Reed said: "I felt she was crying out for help all the time but if I even tried to give her advice on her substance abuse she wouldn't listen."

The coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.