Hardmission Melbourne: Seven partygoers fight for their lives in comas after overdosing on party drugs at a dance festival

Seven people are fighting for their lives in induced comas and after overdosing on illegal drugs at a Melbourne dance festival.

The mass overdose at the Hardmission Festival at Flemington Racecourse took place over four hours on Saturday.

The victims, who are believed to have taken the party drug ecstasy, were rushed to hospitals including Royal Melbourne, St Vincent’s, Footscray, Sunshine and The Austin.

“There were a lot of patients who overdosed on MDMA (ecstasy), and quite a few of them were in a critical condition,” Danny Hill of the Victorian Ambulance Association told the newspaper. Herald Sun.

‘Seven of the patients had to be put into an induced coma by our Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance paramedics and have a breathing tube placed down their throat so they were fully anaesthetized.’

Video footage from the festival posted on social media showed a person holding up a cell phone with the word “Caps?” written on the screen (photo)

Paramedics from other parts of the city were called in at around 10.30pm to help with what Mr Hill called an ’emergency’ situation.

Video footage from the festival posted on social media showed a person holding up a cell phone with the word “Caps?” written on the screen.

This is a word sometimes used by people who want to buy illegal drugs in capsules.

As temperatures rose to 32 degrees, partygoers danced shirtless, with some writing on social media that it was too hot.

Mr Hill said people attending such events should inform themselves about the dangers of using illegal drugs such as ecstasy.

‘I think this highlights the dangers of some of the drugs passed around at rave parties and why there need to be mechanisms in place to try to protect against them. It raises the issue of pill testing and pill checking.”

He said drugs sold at raves are sometimes laced with other chemicals and can have very dangerous side effects.

Mr Hill said the drug people are given can ‘often be very different to what they think they have bought’.

Volunteers from alcohol and drug harm reduction DanceWize were at the Hardmission Festival.

The mass overdose at the Hardmission Festival (pictured) at Flemington Racecourse happened over four hours on Saturday

There’s a social media post from the Hardmission Festival, which took place in Melbourne on Saturday

On Friday, organizers posted on social media that “Hardmission is committed to providing a safe and enjoyable experience for all our visitors.

‘As part of our commitment to minimizing harm, we are proud to announce DanceWize’s presence at the event.

‘Your well-being is our priority. If you or anyone you know needs help or support during the event, DanceWize will be on site, ready to provide information, guidance and assistance with any harm reduction concerns.”

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Hardmission and DanceWize for comment.

Australia’s spring/summer music festivals got off to a horror start in the first weekend of October, when 18 people at two events were rushed to hospital after drug overdoses.

This happened despite the introduction of amnesty bins and a large police presence with sniffer dogs.

The festival season kicked off with tens of thousands of revelers at Sydney Olympic Park’s Knockout Outdoor and Sydney’s Listen Out at Centennial Park.

That October weekend, more than seventy people were arrested for drug possession and another four for drug trafficking.

The arrests and hospitalizations come despite the fact that amnesty bins have been set up at both events where revelers can dispose of drugs without fear of arrest.

The policy was introduced as a recommendation as part of an investigation conducted in 2020 into the deaths of six young people at music festivals in NSW between December 2017 and January 2019.

Australia’s spring/summer music festivals got off to a horror start in the first weekend of October, when 18 people at two events were rushed to hospital after drug overdoses (pictured, revelers at Listen Out)

Australia’s festive season kicked off in October with the Knockout Outdoor (pictured) and Listen Out festivals

Alex Ross-King, 19, Joshua Tam, 22, Callum Brosnan, 21, Diana Nguyen, 21, Joseph Pham, 23 all died at festivals after taking MDMA or ecstasy.

Five out of six festival goers also had other illegal substances in their system.

The inquest also recommended a number of other measures, including pill testing, scrapping the use of sniffer dogs and reducing the number of strip searches.

The government rejected all recommendations to use police sniffer dogs this weekend to discourage drug use.