‘Chaos’ erupts at homeopathic medicine conference after 29 people accidentally ingest LSD-like drug

A homeopathy conference in Germany has ended in “chaos” after a group of delegates unknowingly ingested an LSD-like drug.

Reports say that ambulances were called when 29 men and women were seen “staggering around, rolling in a meadow, talking gibberish and suffering severe cramps” at the hotel just south of Hamburg where the conference was being held.

The patients, who ranged in ages between 24 and 56, were found suffering from “delusions, breathing problems, racing hearts and cramps, some in life-threatening conditions,” according to the public broadcaster NDR.

From Deutsche Welle:

The news magazine “Der Spiegel” described those affected as alternative and homeopathic practitioners. NDR said doctors were also among the seminar group and suggested that participants might have taken part in a drug experiment.

Fire service spokesman Mathias Köhlbrandt told NDR that he had never experienced such as situation.

“Men and women lay with cramps in the garden and in front of the building,” he said, adding they did not seem to have knowingly taken a drug.

Some were suffering delusions and even psychoses, NDR reported. Some patients were administered sedatives en route to hospital, said the emergency response physician who headed the rescue operation, Dr. Kai Rathjen.

The seminar center’s propreitor Stefka Weiland said her team distanced itself from “what has occurred.”

“It must have been a multiple overdose. That does not support the view that the people concerned took the hallucinogen knowingly,” Torsten Passie of Germany’s expert commission for narcotics told NDR.

“One has to assume that people were not told about the substance, its effects and risks before taking it.”

30 Menschen kaum ansprechbar: #Massenvergiftung in Tagungszentrum #Handeloh-Inzmühlen https://t.co/SAraM2r0St pic.twitter.com/XmjfU99ZQO

— BILD Hamburg (@BILD_Hamburg) September 4, 2015

Blood and urine tests revealed they had all taken hallucinogenic drug 2C-E (known as Aquarust in Germany) which has been illegal there since 2014.

[The Independent] Featured image via Twitter