On Thursday,a coronial inquest heard the cluster was uncovered when 20 people were hospitalised in one weekend in January 2017,after taking what police thought was bad ecstasy in the Chapel Street nightclub precinct,sparking a major police investigation.
One died in front of his girlfriend,another on Christmas Day. The five males,known as Anson,17,Ilker,32,Jordan,22,Jason,30,and James,23,didn't know one another but had all consumed the same rare substance in the hours before they died.
Launching a coronial inquest into the deaths on Wednesday,Coroner Paresa Spanos heard harrowing accounts of how the young men all thought they were taking a small dose of the party drug MDMA.
One of the young men sustained"unsurvivable"brain damage while others suffered seizures and cardiac arrests across different parts of Melbourne between July 2016 and January 2017.
Autopsies later found all had a combination of two rare synthetic substances – 25C-NBOMe and 4-Fluoroamphetamine – in their systems.
Toxicology analyst Dimitri Gerostamoulos said novel psychoactive substances were"very potent"and difficult to detect. He said while his lab could now test for 900 types,new varieties were created every week.
“This is not a common combination of drugs,it is rare these two drugs are found together. We have not seen this combination of drugs since,” he said.