The teenage son of Australian musician Nick Cave fell to his death after taking the hallucinogenic drug LSD, an inquest in England has heard.

Arthur Cave, 15, suffered a "catastrophic" head injury after plunging from a cliff in Brighton, East Sussex, on July 14.





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Arthur Cave, 15, suffered a "catastrophic" head injury after plunging from a cliff in Brighton, East Sussex, on July 14.

Witnesses described seeing the student "walking, staggering and zig-zagging" before standing "dangerously" close to the cliff edge moments before he fell.

Arthur and a friend - who can't be named for legal reasons - had earlier taken LSD, also known as acid, an inquest in Brighton was told.

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Arthur, left, and his brother appeared at the end of 20,000 Days on Earth, a film documenting the singer's life.

Members of the public tried to resuscitate him after he was found lying on the underpass of Ovingdean Gap without any shoes or socks, but he died later at Royal Sussex County Hospital.

Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, senior coroner for Brighton, on Tuesday recorded a conclusion of accidental death.

She said: "I expect the decision and planning to take LSD, or a hallucinogenic drug likely to be LSD, was made on the spur of the moment."

"It's clear he could not know what was real and what was not real. It's completely impossible to know what was in Arthur's mind and what he was seeing," she said.

Cave and his wife Susie briefly walked out of the courtroom before graphic details of their son's injuries were read out from a post-mortem examination report.

The coroner said the cause of death was "unsurvivable head injuries due to a witnessed fall from a cliff".

A contributory factor was the recent ingestion of a hallucinogenic drug.

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