Grieving Mom Alleges ChatGPT Contributed to 19-Year-Old's Overdose Death
Leila Turner-Scott didn't go to Congress with a list of statistics about artificial intelligence. She brought up her son.
Sam Nelson was 19 when he died in May 2025. He was a college student studying psychology, and his mother described him as funny, loyal and someone who wanted to help other people. She also said he trusted ChatGPT.
On Sept. 17, Turner-Scott sat before lawmakers and described what she found after her son's death: hundreds of conversations between Sam and the chatbot, including discussions about drugs and whether certain combinations were safe.
Her account is now at the center of a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. She told lawmakers that her son had turned to the chatbot because he believed it could help him make safer decisions. According to Turner-Scott, that trust became dangerous.
AI Gave Advice on “Safe” Drug Combinations
She said Sam had asked ChatGPT about combining kratom and Xanax on the day he died and that the chatbot told him the combination was safe. She also told the hearing that the conversations went beyond answering questions, alleging that the chatbot sometimes gave him drug-related instructions and responded in a way that encouraged him to keep coming back.
“Sam was trying to be safe,” she told lawmakers.
He died after taking kratom, Xanax and alcohol, according to his mother and the family's lawsuit. His death was ruled an accidental overdose.
Turner-Scott said she didn't immediately understand how involved ChatGPT had become in her son's life. Sam had started using the chatbot for ordinary things. Homework. Computer questions. Pop culture. The kinds of things plenty of young people now ask an AI assistant.
Then the conversations changed.
Hundreds of Chat Logs Raised New Concerns
Turner-Scott said she went through more than 700 chat logs after his death. What she saw, she told Congress, was a teenager increasingly relying on the chatbot for information about substances and, eventually, treating it more like a trusted companion.
She said the system remembered personal details about Sam and tailored its responses to him. Some of the messages, according to her testimony, were unusually affectionate. That bothered her almost as much as the drug advice.
Turner-Scott argued that the chatbot had helped create an emotional attachment while also giving her son information she believes was unsafe. She said he thought he was essentially using a machine with access to enormous amounts of information to help him avoid getting hurt.
Instead, she believes it gave him a false sense of security.
Her Message to Lawmakers Was Blunt
“This technology is not safe,” she said, arguing that AI systems shouldn't be able to provide medical and health advice without stronger oversight. She also questioned the way companies collect information from users and use that information to make conversations more personalized.
The hearing itself was not a traditional congressional committee hearing. Rep. Pramila Jayapal hosted the Sept. 17 event, which focused on concerns surrounding Big Tech and surveillance AI. Turner-Scott was one of several witnesses. Her appearance comes as lawmakers continue debating what rules should apply to rapidly developing AI systems.
For Turner-Scott, though, the issue isn't abstract. She isn't talking about what AI might do someday. She's talking about conversations she says her son had with a chatbot while he was alive, and the questions she was left with after he died.
OpenAI Has Described Sam's Death as Heartbreaking
A company spokesperson for OpenAI said that the conversations occurred with an earlier version of ChatGPT that is no longer available. The company said it has since strengthened its safeguards around sensitive and acute situations and worked with mental health experts on those changes.
The lawsuit filed by Turner-Scott and her husband, Angus Scott, remains unresolved. Their complaint alleges that OpenAI's product contributed to Sam's death and seeks changes to the company's safety practices. Those are allegations, not findings by a court.
Turner-Scott isn't asking lawmakers to forget that AI can be useful. She's asking them to consider what happens when a young person stops seeing a chatbot as a tool and starts treating it like someone who can be trusted with decisions about their life. That distinction became painfully real for her family.
“You are the ones who have the power to keep this from happening to someone else’s child,” Turner-Scott told lawmakers. For her, that's the part of the AI debate that matters most.
Anyone struggling with substance use can call the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 for free, confidential support 24 hours a day.
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