A PHARMACIST has been struck off after going on a three-day cocaine bender.

Staff at Boots had to call an ambulance for Peter Barr after he complained of a racing heart and difficulty breathing.

Colleague Helen Stanton told a fitness to practice hearing that he had “taken off his tie, appeared pale and was unable to articulate what was wrong”.

Barr, a pharmacist of six years, then lay on the floor in the dispensary in March last year.

He admitted to colleague Karen Robinson he had been at a party, adding: “Between you and me, it wasn’t just alcohol I was doing.”

A General Pharmaceutical Council report revealed: “When she asked him what else he had been doing, he replied ‘cocaine’.”

Barr, from Northern Ireland, refused a drugs test on the day and was suspended from his role at the chemist in Grimsby. Dispenser Amanda Noon told the panel that Barr claimed “he’d been taking cocaine for three days straight”.

Barr, who did not attend the hearing, was suspended from the pharmacy register for eight months.

He was told that his actions “would be regarded as deplorable by the public and by fellow professionals”.