A beauty therapy student was caught with £500 of heroin she bought to get herself through the “desperation” caused by the coronavirus lockdown.
Pauline Stewart was snared with the Class A haul after cops raided her Edinburgh home to execute a search warrant.
A court heard the 38-year-old struggled with being “locked in her own house” and lapsed back into drug-taking.
Stewart’s beauty therapy course had been brought to an end by the lockdown.
She was excused attendance at the city’s sheriff court on Wednesday but her guilty plea to heroin possession was accepted in her absence.
Fiscal depute Ross Carvel said officers arrived at Stewart’s address in the Newington area at around 5.10pm on May 27 to enforce a search warrant for an “unrelated matter”.
He said Stewart was home and admitted two wraps of brown powder found on a coffee table in the living room belonged to her.
Mr Carvel said the substance was later found to be 6.5g of heroin and Stewart had told police: “It’s for personal use.”
Defence agent Edward Cadden said the “time and desperation” involved with being kept home by the lockdown caused Stewart to “slip back into a heroin habit”.
The solicitor said his client paid £500 for the drug, buying in bulk as it was cheaper than a number of smaller deals.
Mr Cadden said Stewart’s drug taking was “ongoing” and she was “using two bags a day”.
Sheriff Adrian Fraser deferred sentence for reports until December.
