Delegates at Homeopathy Conference in Hospital After Taking Hallucinogenic Drug

Dozens of participants at the “Heilpraktikers” forum in the town of Handeloh south of Hamburg required emergency medical assistance after taking pills similar to LSD, the Independent reported.

Global reporting caveats withstanding, it sure sounds like a bunch of homeopathy doctors accidentally took a bunch of 2C-E (a psychedelic research chemical resembling the effects of LSD) at a conference last Friday, because it seems unlikely 29 people would overdose all at once unless it was on accident.

The patients, aged between 24 and 56, were found suffering from delusions, breathing problems, racing hearts and cramps, with some in a serious condition, Deutsche Welle reported.

Torsten Passie, a member of the German government’s expert commission for narcotics, told NDR: “It must have been a multiple overdose”.

Authorities said their preliminary finding was that the group was poisoned with amphetamines, but Koehlbrandt said they didn’t knowingly take the substance.

Tests revealed they had taken hallucinogenic drug 2C-E, which was made illegal in Germany a year ago.

Currently, however, it isn’t known if the attendees mistakenly took the drug under the pretense of conducting some sort of experiment or were maliciously misled into the act, and there is still a pending investigation as to whether anyone has violated Germany’s Narcotics Act. Drug experimenters on Erowid call the visual effects “gorgeous”, and one guy credits it with helping him quit smoking.

“The organizers of this obscure conference are unknown to us and such events will not be tolerated by our association”, The Independent quoted a representative as saying.

The Association of German Healing Practitioners (VDH), which represents homeopaths, quickly distanced itself from the embarrassment. They generally aren’t used to taking drugs with any real effect, however-so imagine the panic when delegates to a homeopathy conference inadvertently ingested large amounts of a hallucinogenic drug known as 2C-E.