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A 19-Year-Old Died After Taking ‘Gas Station Heroin’. His Mom Wonders Why It’s Still Being Sold Legally. (www.vice.com)
submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
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Johnathon Morrison's mother helped get tianeptine banned in Alabama. But she says it makes her “sick” it is still being sold in stores across the U.S.

Kristi Terry keeps replaying the last time she saw her son Johnathon Morrison alive.

The 19-year-old scholarship student came into her bedroom on the night of Feb. 20, 2019 and asked if it was OK if he cooked some pizza rolls; he didn't want to hog them from his younger sister, who was a fussy eater.

Terry, 41, and her husband found it odd that he was asking permission.

“We were like ‘you don’t have to ask to cook something," she said. In hindsight, she wishes she’d gotten up to see if he was feeling alright. She wonders if he was feeling sick at that point and was trying to settle his stomach with food.

The next morning Terry and her 15-year-old daughter found Morrison unresponsive in his bedroom in Trafford, Alabama. Paramedics spent an hour trying to revive him, but they couldn't. Next to his body was a half-eaten plate of pizza rolls and a nearly empty bottle of tianeptine pills, an unapproved drug known as “gas station heroin” because of its addictive effects on some users.

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[-] yarr@feddit.nl 61 points 9 months ago

He stumbled upon tianeptine by chance when he popped into a gas station in search of medication to relieve his migraine, according to his mom. The gas station didn’t have Excedrin, but an employee there offered Morrison a bottle of pills called Tianaa, a popular brand of tianeptine.

So Morrison took it like Tylenol, popping a couple at a time over the next few hours.

Just three of the 15 tianeptine pills in the bottle remained, Terry said.

Hmmm... seems a bit fishy. Who takes 12 Tylenol that quickly? I think the REAL story is this kid wanted to get ripped, had probably bought this crap before and took a megadose after feeling a buzz.

Popping 12 of anything you get from a gas station is probably a bad idea.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 9 months ago

That was my impression too. Plus, he didn’t really die of an overdose per se, he choked on his own vomit from the pizza rolls. The same thing could happen with alcohol, Ambien, or even heavy sleeping.

It’s a tragedy for sure, but I’m not sure that this particular case is rock solid evidence that the product needs to be taken off the shelves. It would be a good idea to get this stuff regulated for quality though.

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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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