A 19-Year-Old Died After Taking ‘Gas Station Heroin’. His Mom Wonders Why It’s Still Being Sold Legally.

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.