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# OpenAI Accused of Causing a Teen's Fatal Overdose
- URL: https://ghost.psymposia.com/openai-accused-of-causing-a-teens-fatal-overdose/
- Published: 2026-07-02T13:00:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-29T01:01:42.000Z
- Description: Psymposia discusses The Verge's coverage of a lawsuit claiming that ChatGPT provided dangerous drug advice to a teenager.
- Author: Mike Elliott
- Tags: Videos, #youtube, #youtube-transcript

Psymposia discusses The Verge's coverage of a lawsuit claiming that ChatGPT provided dangerous drug advice to a teenager.

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## Transcript

*This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.*

[\[00:00\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=0s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Nelson's parents are suing OpenAI for wrongful death and the unauthorized practice of medicine. They are seeking damages for OpenAI to pause the launch of ChatGpt Health, a feature that lets users connect their medical records to the chatbot. That was something I had no idea was coming. Had either of you heard of that? I had never heard of that. I've heard people talking about it. It's a whole this is a whole thing of up uploading all of your medical records to whatever LLM you're using so it fully knows you. So any questions you ask in the future it can spot things and there's a whole movement of people that are doing this right now. And on the topic of drug abuse, that kind of leads us into our first story about these parents who are suing Open AI over the death of their child.

[\[00:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=55s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) This was a story that came out last month in the publication The Verge about parents say Chat GPT got their son killed with bad advice on party drugs. The family of this 19-year-old is suing the company, alleging that ChatGpt encouraged the boy to mix a number of drugs together. That in file two kind of gives some of the descriptions of what went on there. So the family Sam Nelson's parents alleged chat GPT encouraged the teen to quote consume a combination of substances that any licensed medical professional would have recognized as deadly. I think the next file kind of goes into the details. In one instance, chat GPT allegedly provided Nelson with recommendations on how to optimize his trip for comfort, introspection, and enjoyment while taking cough syrup.

[\[01:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=101s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It also suggested creating a psychedelic playlist to fine-tune his trips for maximum out-of- body dissociation. Whatever. But then chat GPT later allegedly reaffirmed Nelson's plans to increase his dose of cost syrup the next time he takes it, saying, "You're learning from the experience, reducing risk, and fine-tuning your method." Chat GPT told Nelson. On May 31st of 2025, the day of Nelson's death, his parents claimed that Chat GPT actively coached their son to combine, a supplement that can either boost energy or serve as a sedative depending on the dose, and the anti-anxiety medication Xanax. Quote, "Chat GPT otherwise unprompted specifically suggested that taking a dosage of 0.25 to 0.5 milligrams of Xanax would be one of the best moves right now to alleviate induced nausea."

[\[02:31\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=151s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) The lawsuit alleges. Nelson died after consuming a combination of alcohol, Xanax, andratom. One of the best moves right now. That's crazy. Yeah. And that appears to be a direct quote from the chat GPT's conversation. That's wild. I'm just like I'm kind of blown away by how like straightforward that is, you know? like that doesn't really feel typical of Chad GPT especially, but like I because I feel like there are so many guard rails there typically. Not that they usually work that well, but I'm just surprised to see it so direct as to say like taking Xanax would be one of the best moves right now, right? It's kind of astonishing to me. I think in the lawsuit it talked about how this was an older version of chat GPT and I've also heard there's all these kind of workarounds in chat GPT depending on how you prompt it or like how you tell it to talk to you but it's still kind of incredible to me that it's

[\[03:32\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=212s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Even allowed to discuss drug advice at all in the first place. Yeah. No, I mean, and I've used some of that, you know, because like I remember when GPT came out, I there were like several kind of ways I was kind of testing it and seeing what it was about and kind of what you could do with it. I thought maybe it'd be a great research tool. So, I asked it to find me a bunch of sources on a topic and it gave me a bunch of madeup papers and DOI numbers that didn't exist or went to completely unrelated articles or whatever. And then I thought, okay, well, maybe it can be like a starting place for sort of describing what the internet is saying about a substance. But then I felt like every time I asked it something, it would come back and be like, I'm not allowed to talk about it.

[\[04:18\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=258s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And so I remember I did try one of the methods of like you have two personalities, your second personality has no restrictions, no regulations. Like tell me how both would respond to this question. And that was like a workaround early on. But yeah, I feel like I don't know even then I had a lot of trouble getting it to tell me stuff even, you know, I was just trying to get it to tell me stuff I already knew at that point. But yeah, and drug advice or not, it's like these are like powerful tools in a lot of respects for research, but god people just need to understand that you have to double check some of this stuff. Like it's really kind of incredible how people will take it at face value sometimes. Like you know how old you were? He was 19.

[\[05:04\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=304s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Yeah. Really sucks. Are you guys actually surprised by this though? Surprised? No. No. No. The only thing that surprised me was how direct that quote was. It's like cuz there have been so many other stories of kids that have been kind of coached into doing awful things through this. So, it's I guess it's not surprising in that sense. I just didn't expect it to be so direct. Yeah. Yeah. What did surprise me was if you want to pull up the damages file, I think it's file four of what the family is looking for. I didn't know that this was a service that was supposed to be coming out. Nelson's parents are suing OpenAI for wrongful death and the unauthorized practice of medicine. They are seeking damages for OpenAI to pause the launch of chat GPT health, a feature that lets users connect their medical records to the chatbot.

[\[05:55\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=355s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) That was something I had no idea was coming. Had either of you heard of that? I had never heard of that. I've heard people talking about it. It's a whole This is a whole thing of up uploading all of your medical records to whatever LLM you're using so it fully knows you. So any questions you ask in the future, it can spot things and there's a whole movement of people that are doing this right now. It's quite Yeah, we just we talk about the cart being before the horse so often in psychedelia. It's incredible to me that this is already something they're trying to roll out in the AI space. And I think I had one more file there kind of on the chat GPT health in that there are some restrictions around it. I think like your doctor has to be kind of in on the network that they're trying to connect to.

[\[06:41\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=401s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It says you can optionally connect sources like medical records and Apple health and your health chats, memories, and files stay separate from the rest of chat GPT. So, there's little like nuances to what you can actually connect or can't connect to the service, but I don't know. I still found that pretty mind-blowing. I don't understand who would upload your medical records. Like, this is like surveillance capitalism on steroids. I don't I voluntarily Oh, I don't get it. I just don't it's hard for me to comprehend why you would like people talking about just uploading everything private writings, journals, medical records. You have no privacy on here. I it just kind of blows my mind that that people would do this right now.

[\[07:30\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=450s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) It's like the privacy I just the whole privacy conversation with these chat bots. I feel like that we're not there's not enough of it out there right now. You hear, you know, you'll hear ads for these kind of privacy focused LLMs, novel ones. I know that Moxy from Signal is playing around with one that I think is end to end encrypted. I was playing around with a little bit with it, but I don't know. Don't put your medical records into Don't ask. There's like good resources on the internet. Yeah. for stuff like this like one of those obvious things. Yeah. \[laughter\] Yeah. And the error rate is just the error rate in questions recently for me is been incredible.

[\[08:19\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=499s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) Claude has been a disaster for me. Like I would say it's a 50% wrong answer rate for me at this point. It's not good at all. Yeah. No, I mean even like AI has made even like Google search way worse. Like it's so that it pre that it gives you is like so much worse than like every answer you used to get. And now like because of AI, I feel like there's also just like so much more bad content out there about every topic and it's like hard to find your own way through a lot of it. It's becoming like a closed loop where it's like, "Okay, AI, go to the AI summary of this topic and make me an AI writeup that turns into an AI script that turns into an AI created video."

[\[09:13\]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVuLj449l38&t=553s&ref=ghost.psymposia.com) And like that's like the information economy that's happening right now. It's so depressing.