Eight people rushed to hospital after mass drug overdose on Gold Coast

UPDATE: Eight people have been rushed to hospital on the Gold Coast after overdosing on a mystery drug. Two people are in a serious condition, one is in an induced coma.

Paramedics have rushed to a house at Mermaid Waters on the Gold Coast.

EIGHT people have been rushed to hospital after overdosing on a mystery drug on the Gold Coast.

Two people are in a serious condition, one is in an induced coma.

Four men and a woman were taken to hospital from a house at Mermaid Waters and three Victorian footballers staying at the Islander hotel in Surfers Paradise on an end-of-season trip were also transported by ambulance after the mass overdose.

All are aged in their late teens to 20s and are believed to have been partying in Surfers Paradise.

At least one of the victims had to be sedated, a Queensland Ambulance Service spokesman said.

QAS supervisor Paul Young said paramedics arrived at the Islander to find three men ‘severely hallucinating’ on an ‘unknown substance’.

All three were taken to hospital, one in such a serious condition he had to be intubated.

Paramedics take a patient away from a Mermaid Waters home.

“It made them hallucinate, seeing things that weren’t really there.

“They were doing weird things (like) jumping on furniture.”

At Mermaid Waters, one of the drug victims was found swimming in a canal when paramedics arrived at the Orvieto Ave residence about 7.30am today.

It’s a bit of a concern to QAS and other emergency services,being so close to Schoolies, that these type of drugs are around out there, and this is what happens if you should take them,” Mr Young said.

Mr Young said the consequences could have been deadly.

“Any illegal drugs or unknown substance that you take, the effect is totally unknown,” he said.

“Could they be deadly? Most certainly.”

He said both overdoses were believed to be linked due to the similar symptoms of the patients at both addresses.

“Is it a bad batch? Any type of (illegal) drug is a bad batch,” he said.

“You don’t know what goes in them, you don’t know the effect on the human body it has.”

Police have launched an investigation into the source of the drug.