DJ Mao Hamasaki Collapses Mid-Set in Hong Kong, Four Substances Found in Her System
Japanese DJ Mao Hamasaki's manager says a stranger offered her a spiked drink while she was working in Tsim Sha Tsui on Halloween night. Hospital tests found four substances in her system, and she's now speaking out to warn others.
Four Substances, One Halloween Night
Four different substances turned up in Mao Hamasaki's system after she was allegedly drugged while working at a club in Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui district, in the early hours of Sunday. The Japanese DJ, 33, also known as DJ Mao, had performed at several clubs through Halloween night and was booked for a second set at another venue when things went wrong.
Before heading to that second gig, a stranger gave her a couple of shots, her manager said. She later described them on X as "something like an orange juice-flavoured cocktail?" She noticed something cloudy at the bottom of the glass and assumed it was pulp. Forty minutes to an hour later, she started her set, and recalled an intense dryness in her eyes. After toasting a customer with the same drink, her body stiffened and her memory cut off. She woke up in an ambulance and was told she had suffered a seizure. Her manager separately told SCMP that she began convulsing after drinking from a glass of what was thought to be orange juice.
"Drugged While Working"
Hamasaki's manager posted the news to her Facebook page at 5.40am that Sunday, with two photos of her in a wheelchair being taken to an ambulance: "Drugged while working." A separate post on DJ Mao's official Facebook page, translated from Chinese, used a similar line, "Someone was drugged at work," alongside the same two photos. She was admitted to intensive care, where hospital tests returned positive for the four substances. She has since regained consciousness and is recovering in a Hong Kong hospital. In posts on Threads, she said she was sober but staying in hospital for observation on her doctor's advice.
In her latest post on X, on November 2, Hamasaki, a former Japanese adult-film actress, wrote that the incident was the first time she had "faced drugs," and that she had felt "the terror and harm of them firsthand."
Going Public
"Moving forward, to ensure no one else ends up a victim like me, I want to do what I can to raise awareness and issue warnings about preventing drug abuse (anti-drug efforts) and share it with as many people as possible in whatever form I can," she wrote. Most drink-spiking cases never get that kind of public detail from the person it happened to, let alone from someone whose job depends on being booked back into the same rooms.
The case, she said, is now with the police. On X, she added: "Once I'm discharged, I'll start giving statements to the local police, so this will be my last post about this from my own account!"
Cover photo: Mao Hamasaki, via Facebook.
