The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
> "Although the most concentrated source of 5-MeO-DMT is the Sonoran Desert toad, the compound is also produced by some plant species in Latin America, where it was traditionally used in snuffs."
The author fails to mention that these toads also contain an additional spectrum of toxins:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufotenin#Toads
The plant-based snuffs containing 5-MeO-DMT, 5-OH-DMT, etc. in contrast are likely far safer, and have a very long history of use, for example the Cebil seed, Anandenanthera colubrina, has been used for thousands of years in the northwestern Argentine region of Puna. That would be a far better source for any therapeutic use than toads.
All in all, not a very well researched article, and overly sensationalist as well.
Can someone explain this new psychedelic drug craze to me btw? Most of the people who're into it and tell me about the medicinal use of psychedelics seem to have very little experience with any of these drugs themself. The whole thing gives off cultish vibes to me.
People are also becoming aware of the healing powers of cannabis, believing less in the Reefer Madness-type anti-cannabis propaganda from yesteryear, knowing people who use cannabis or using it themselves and seeing that it didn't ruin their life and was actually kind of fun/helpful, and seeing that the sky didn't fall when cannabis was effectively legalized all over the place. They understand the same could happen with psychedelics.
Also, psychedelics have been widely used at music festivals and raves, and there's been a lot of ayahuasca tourism and other psychedelic tourism in recent decades.. which leads me to believe that you're hanging out with the wrong crowd if the people you know don't have much experience with psychedelics. There have been many millions of people who've used them. Their use is not a media myth.
As for cultishness, there's a little of that, but I'd call it more of a health fad than a cult. Fortunately there's a lot of research showing that this particular health fad actually works to help a lot of people, unlike a lot of other health fads.
I am concerned that widespread religious use of psychedelics could eventually lead to a small minority of people getting fanatical, self-righteous, and destructive (ala Manson's own cult, Jonestown, or the various religious wars that have been fought throughout history), but I'm not aware of anything like that happening yet.
5-meo-dmt is extremely powerful stuff and unlike DMT it can cause you to end up in the hospital or dead. It's not something to be trifled with. It made a friend of mine's mom really lose her sense of what is even real anymore. I usually see these sorts of negative results in people who are long-term abusing hard drugs like stimulants or opiates over time, not like immediately after a few sessions of a psychedelic.
I've yet to see any definitive evidence showing that 5-MeO alone caused anyone to die.
The handful of deaths I'm aware of have been from 5-MeO mixed with other substances like alcohol, and due to asphyxiation on vomit -- which can happen from alcohol alone.
If you drink too much alcohol you could choke on your own vomit and die. Yet people aren't generally freaked out when people drink alcohol. They should in fact be more concerned about alcohol, as it kills thousands of people every year, and is well documented to be involved in many deaths both alone and when mixed with other substances.
The lesson from this all this is don't mix 5-MeO with other substances. Also stay far away from practitioners who pour water down your throat while you're pretty much helpless and out of your body. That's incredibly dangerous -- but not because of the 5-MeO alone, but because some demented person is trying to drown you.
Also, there hasn't been enough human use of 5-MeO to know its long-term health effects, so that is an additional risk, as are its potential negative effects on mental health.
Everyone considering it should thoroughly educate themselves -- both on its risks and benefits, so they can make an informed decision.
Great episode, but that scene is pretty disturbing.
1 - don't eat or drink for at least 4 or 5 hours beforehand, so there's nothing in your stomach to vomit
2 - lie in the recovery position ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_position ) with one's mouth facing downwards to minimize the chance of aspirating any liquid
3 - don't move around
4 - be with a trained, trusted, and experienced practitioner, who you've vetted thoroughly and who you are sure can keep you safe
5 - again, don't mix substances!
I'm pretty convinced that it's got tremendous therapeutic potential like many other strong things around these lines. But group dosing like ~100 people in the way these people are doing it is just wrong on so many levels. The only way I see them going if they continue without being apprehended first is if they turn it into something like a cult, which would obviously be even worse.
I think you might be discarding your priors here. Alcohol use is extremely common, so even relatively uncommon negative effects will happen a lot. The important number to compare is how many people would see equivalently bad effects if the same number of people used <other substance X> as drank alcohol.
https://twitter.com/HamiltonMorris/status/150598073831904051...
@HamiltonMorris · Mar 20 It's nice to see the NYTimes reporting on toad conservation, slightly less nice to see a journalist rehashing years of work done by me and the Pharmacopeia team while strenuously avoiding any attribution.
The article Hamilton is talking about is probably this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/toad-venom-psychedelic...
But more generally speaking, a person has to gauge the safety of a drug they buy on their knowledge of the source. Ideally, it's via someone who has purchased from that source before and can vouch for the drugs.
Both these descriptions of dose are meaningless. A typical dose of LSD is anywhere between 50 and 300 micrograms. But with such a minuscule amount being so potent it is deceptive when considering what a lethal overdose of LSD is. I've heard it said you'd have to literally drown in LSD for it to kill you. I expect the actual lethal dose is an estimation, because even 500x the normal dose is apparently not lethal.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case, as there are now very potent and potentially lethal drugs like Bromo-DragonFLY[1] that are active in similar dosages to LSD.
So you really need to test what you get.
This is a great and very important question. There'd be a lot fewer deaths and adverse reactions if more people took it seriously.
For one, you could study chemistry and pharmacology and synthesize the compounds yourself.
Second, you could test the compounds you got. There are testing kits you can buy and testing services (like those done by DanceSafe at festivals), but while they can test for known compounds, they can't test for unknown ones (like many of the new designer drugs that aren't well known yet)... and they generally don't test for potency either.
Third, you could grow or pick some natural psychedelics, like mushrooms, cacti, and various plants. You have to be really careful with this and really know what you're doing or rely on someone who does. Alan Rockefeller's talks on identifying psilocybin mushrooms are great for this: [1]
Fourth, some psychedelics like morning glory seeds, hawaiian baby woodrose seeds, salvia divinorum, and ketamine can be acquired legally in many places. 5-MeO-DMT itself is legal in some places. So where these are legal you should be more assured of their safety -- though you'll still want to make sure the seeds are pesticide-free, for example.
Finally, anyone who cares about safety should be advocating legalization, as it's keeping these substances illegal that makes them less safe and leads to many unnecessary deaths and overdoses.
Even cannabis is illegal there, although it has been decriminalised for personal use, and its sale is tolerated under certain conditions.
That's not a definite conclusion, but it seems reason enough not to necessarily hanker over one specific psychedelic if you've never done any of them. You'll probably have a profound enough experience on any classic psychedelic.
By the way, cannabis can be psychedelic in high enough doses (especially when eaten), so that might be a way to go for you, considering it's legal in so many places.. and it's generally a lot safer to get cannabis on the above-ground market than some mystery substance on the black market.
Depending on where you go, other psychedelics could also be legal. Dig deep and ye shall probably find. Just do some thorough research on what you're getting into, particularly on testing substances to make sure you're getting what you think you're getting, and on how to do them safely.
A few states are legalizing psilocybin, that'd be the way to go.
At the time I had no idea what it was (probably a good thing, I was young and a bit adventurous). Just a toad. I let him go by the water hazard.
It is incredibly intense-- even traumatic. And there is no precise "dosing".
Stay away from all drugs. Drugs do not lead to enlightenment. They do not lead to some hidden knowledge. They throw your neuro-chemicals out of balance-- potentially forever if you're misfortunate.
Hallucinogens can affect you forever, negatievely, and never stop-- and there is no cure if they do, for example: "Hallucinogen-persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a long-lasting and potentially permanent syndrome characterized by a spontaneous recurrence of perceptual/visual disturbances".
It is not worth the risk. You have only one brain-- don't tamper with its health and safety. Again-- there's no hidden knowledge there, no enlightenment. It's not worth it: put your focus on something valuable, productive, and safe.
This reminds me of something near the end of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas":
> We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped to create. A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the acid culture: The desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
My own experience is relatively tame. I'd say the worst part was the difference between my expectations and reality. The "hidden knowledge" you talk about and the "fallacy of the acid culture" are a good illustration of that. But I wouldn't call this life-altering or destroying. It's like going to a country that you really want to go to, only to find out it's not what you expected. I've seen many people that would rationalize this by saying "the drugs showed you what you needed, that you need to manage your expectations", but you can rationalize/anaylze any situation in your life like that. I went to Chernobyl and had a great time, so I should try to go out of my comfort zone more often. I didn't do my best in school and regret it, so I should try to work have to have less/no regrets. Everything has meaning once you search for it.
I'd rather take my chances with the acid culture than with the alcohol culture.
At least there's potential for profound positive healing, empathy for others, and deep contact with the natural world and a transcendent reality.
With alcohol (which Thompson himself seriously abused) the most you get is a bit of social lubrication and maybe a short-lived forgetting of your problems (which, unlike psychedelics, alcohol does not help to come to terms with), while the risks of alcohol are just as great.
I'd also argue that there's a risk to remaining psychedelically naive. The disconnection from nature -- seeing it just as a resource to be exploited -- is one of the major causes of runaway climate change. Psychedelics (though no guarantee) might help to change such attitudes for the better, as multiple studies have shown that they can foster connection and caring for nature. When used constructively, they can also help people have empathy for others -- something we desperately need.
I could go on and on about their potential benefits, but instead I'll just end by noting that it's myopic and one-sided to just look at the acid casualties without looking at all those who've been helped (not hurt) by psychedelics.
That sounds like a false dichotomy, unless you have some data to support that?
I would recommend everybody I know to experiment with drugs. I don’t recommend becoming dependent on ANY drugs.
As adults we evaluate risks and make a decision as to whether the benefits outweigh the risks.
I don't think we can say a priori whether something is too risky for someone without knowing the person and their circumstances. Some people are really at the end of their rope and desperate to try anything, and have already tried many risky things (like antidepressants or other medication, each of which carries their own risks and possibly severe side effects) and will continue doing risky things without a fraction of the potential benefits of psychedelics.
There have been studies which show that psychedelics help people, even to the point of "curing" some of them after a single dose. The evidence so far shows enormous promise and far more effectiveness than traditional antidepressants for severe-treatment resistant depression.
How can we tell people who are suffering, some of whom are suicidal even, that they shouldn't try something which holds so much promise?
Yes, there are risks, and no guarantees. But steps can be taken to maximize the chances of a positive experience... such as doing it in a safe setting with a trusted, trained therapist or guide, and spending a lot of time afterwards integrating the experience with a therapist.
Some other recommendations for enhancing safety:
- lie in the recovery position[1], with the mouth facing downward so fluid can drain
- abstain from food and drink for at least 4 or 5 hours beforehand
- don't mix substances
- thoroughly vet anyone you entrust your safety to, and stay away from facilitators who mess with your body or mind during the experience
Also see the best practices guide of The Conclave: [2]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367557/
Would love to know if you know anything else in the world that can do that repeatably
Counterpoint: I have done quite a lot of DMT and 5-MeO-DMT and they were both fun and interesting substances.
My advice is: Do not stay away from drugs unless: a) that is your personal preference, b) you have a specific medical issue that precludes being able to experiment with something safely or c) you are not curious enough to educate yourself thoroughly about a substance before trying it out.
HPPD is wildly exaggerated by almost exclusively people that have a vested interest in policing other people’s behavior and values. Belief in the dangers of “the ability of any substance to permanently change your brain in a negative and nonspecific way” (a hilarious logically impossible supposition) almost always follow up with “don’t do drugs, instead do what I tell you to do. Read my self help book or convert to my religion. My values are the best values.”
Eh, it's a fine line that once crossed, you don't get to come back from.
I'm glad I stopped drugs when I did. If I could go back in time, I would have never had started doing drugs in my teenage years but unfortunately it was part of my family culture.
The problem with your advice is that it comes with the risk of grievous bodily harm. Not just to one's self, in the case of: if you're predisposed to mental health problems (such as schizophrenia, etc.) or physical health problems (such as heart palpitations or other heart problems), but potentially to other people: if you're using drugs and accidentally affect someone else negatively (physically or emotionally).
I think it's naive to encourage people to do drugs, as it speaks from a place of "Drugs have always been fun and good for me. Therefore they'll always be fun and good for you!" Much like the dogmatic philosophy you mentioned-- no offense, but you seem to be representing a similar dogmatic philosophy but at the other-side of the spectrum (of drug encouragement).
Also, investigating a drug does not in any way guarantee it will not traumatize you or negatively effect you (or others) forever.
Drugs have a high risk of being dangerous, hazardous, addicting, etc.-- that's why they're controlled substances.
I hope you don't ride in cars or cross streets, because they also come with risks of grievous bodily harm.
"Drugs have a high risk of being dangerous, hazardous, addicting, etc.-- that's why they're controlled substances."
Food and sex can be addictive, and plenty of people's health is ruined by them.
Also, plenty of dangerous, hazardous, and addictive drugs like alcohol and cigarettes are not controlled substances.
Psychedelic and cannabis use was associated with minorities, the counterculture, and antiwar protestors. They were seen as a threat to the status quo. Those and some sensationalistic media scares were the real reasons they were banned.
My advice to do drugs is immediately followed by a qualifier that states that you should not do drugs if you would prefer not to do them. I can’t think of anything further from dogmatism than “do x thing unless you don’t feel like doing it.”
> The problem with your advice is that it comes with the risk of grievous bodily harm. Not just to one's self, in the case of: if you're predisposed to mental health problems (such as schizophrenia, etc.) or physical health problems (such as heart palpitations or other heart problems), but potentially to other people: if you're using drugs and accidentally affect someone else negatively (physically or emotionally).
This is entirely addressed by parts a and b of what I wrote.
Out of curiosity, what activities are guaranteed to not negatively affect anyone else emotionally or physically? If that’s the hard and fast rule that you live by, I’d love to know what your average day is like.
I’m glad that you figured out that you’d personally prefer not to do drugs. It’s great that you had the opportunity to gain that knowledge through direct experience. In a way, you could say that what you learned about yourself and your life through drugs was something that you wouldn’t have learned otherwise… like hidden knowledge or a personal enlightenment. I’m sure that you would agree that this deep and personal “knowledge” that you possess about drugs probably couldn’t have become so apparent and impactful to you by simply reading a comment about the concept of drugs on an article about toad venom on HN.
However, the claim that 'hallucinogens can affect you forever, negatively and never stop' is unsupported. These drugs share a common receptor as the basis of their action, the 5-HTP receptor, which is involved with sensory perception at some low level in the brain. This can result in 'visions' or intensified color perception or numerous other effects (synthesia, etc.) Some people enjoy the experience, others do not. The most important rule for the neophyte experimentalist to follow is 'less is more'.
Personally I found psychedelics immensely therapeutic and a great aid to quitting alcohol, and also of great benefit to my 3D-visualization skills. I'd also note that consumer culture norms ('more is always better') can cause disasters when mixed with psychedelics.
However as I note in another comment, toads are a horrible source of 5-MeO-DMT due to the fact that toads of this type contain a variety of other toxins.
Not only that but these toads are at a risk of extinction due to the human demand for their venom.[1]
We also don't know if the toads are harmed by the venom milking process itself. Toads certainly try to get away from humans and don't seem to want to be touched. Squeezing on their glands might be painful for them, though we can't tell because they don't scream or talk, but they do try to get away.
It's ironic that so many people treat these substances as sacred, and yet the animal that has this substance in its body is so often treated without respect and without regard for its existence.
It's doubly sad because synthetic sources of 5-MeO exist, and they don't harm the toad.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/20/us/toad-venom-psychedelic...
This is false. LSD and mushrooms are arguably as safe as or safer than alcohol. However...
There are hundreds other psychedelic compounds in existence, and some can acutely cause death, some even at doses close to recreational levels. Phenethylamines can all be deadly, and nboms cause extremely dangerous vasoconstriction. Some significantly lower seizure threshold.
I think the therapeutic potential for psychedelics is very promising, but there are definitely some psychedelics that are much more dangerous than alcohol.
Chemicals like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25I-NBOMe#Toxicity are among the most potent agonists of the 5-HT2A receptor, and are also extremely dangerous due to potency and their vasoconstrictive and cardiovascular effects.
(There are horrifying stories of people being sold "acid" and then their lips turn blue from vasoconstriction and subsequently need hospital intervention - see: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_25INBOMe_Health_...)
A significant number of the deaths the nbom family has caused can probably be attributed to the difficulties of clandestine dosing in microgram amounts, but I think they may still be more dangerous than alcohol even when dosed accurately. It's certainly more dangerous for naive users without the proper equipment to measure and handle it.
DMT saves my life. And every time I wanted it to end and I chose a pipe before going through with it, I was saved again. DMT taught me many things, but most of all it taught me how to love myself and how to love life.
Mushrooms reinforced those lessons. It took me from poverty to using my natural gifts (coding, tech) in a way that added value to society & let me acquire prosperity.
If it wasn’t for psychedelics, I’d have been 6 ft under many years ago and all the good I’ve experienced and spread would have never happened.
DMT let me make contact with an eternal and boundless love. Maybe it was imagined, maybe it was real, but in any case if an illusion teaches you how to love and how to flourish, tells you that you have an important contribution to make, and sets you on a positive course — is it really an illusion? If actionable and material manifestation occurs as a result of the internal changes, then the “reality” of an experience is confirmed.
5-MeO-DMT is like a shortcut stargate straight to that eternal love. It has and will continue to save many, many lives.
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
There was a good quote from Alan Watts regarding this that I’ve carried with me for years: “When you get the answer, hang up the phone.” - which for me is to say that if you think your work is going to be magically over after using psychedelics, it’s not, that’s just the beginning, take what you’ve learned on move on to something more instead of chasing your tail for years attempting to achieve some elusive plateau of being by phoning it in.
To put it another way, a trip by helicopter over a mountain's summit isn't the same as climbing the mountain, but it might open one's eyes to the goal.
I think it was Ram Dass who responded: "I don't hang up on a teacher."
And what if there's more than one answer? Or what if you've forgotten the answer?
Sometimes what you get is not an answer but an experience, or a communion with the sacred or a transcendent reality which is ineffable and can't be brought back to the ordinary world.
That path demands a lot relative to what we think we need to do to thrive. It requires a lot of work to become simple, a lot of resolve, and a lot of comfort with self. And you often lose course, especially when revisiting mass society for any duration — and in those cases, revisiting psychedelics are very beneficial.
Alan Watts wasn’t alone. He had community and an environment that enabled him to say those things and think that way. He was outside the prison of ordinary society and could afford to hang up. His original audience could also afford that. Most of us cannot.
People in ordinary society need reminders external. Anyone still asleep or just partially awake needs reminders, otherwise the system will make you forget and you’ll be consumed again.
Morally speaking, I don’t view psychedelics as “drugs”. I view them as respecting elders and listening to the original masters; a communion with the plants and the Earth. They all originate from the plants and Earth — psilocybin, from mushrooms; LSD from ergot (a fungi); mescaline from the cactus (a prickly desert thriver, with a warm and soft guiding soul); DMT from nearly every plant and animal alive (the truth is hidden inside all of is); 5-meo-dmt from the Sonoran desert toads and poison tree frogs…and many more, many undiscovered. Knowing these masters requires a level of species evolution and a respect for the elders, the true elders. They do not have human faces or forms, they are alien relative to us and what we have become.
Just as I would always listen to my late grandparents when they had stories to share, and my parents when they have the same, or as I listen to a monk share their story and spend time helping when visiting their temples (of any belief), listening to their lessons, I listen to the stories and wisdom of these plants. Not for fun; not for “enlightenment”; not for power; not in fear or shame or dogma or rigidity; but simply because they are speaking. And when an ancient elder speaks, you ought to stop what you’re doing for a moment and listen. They might just help you in ways you never knew you needed.
Despite everyone on the Internet warning me about how everything is dangerous, I have done all these things without even coming close to risking anything.
I've also noticed that people on the Internet think that a child riding their bicycle on the sidewalk is dangerous to other people on the sidewalk. So that leaves me with the natural conclusion: the threshold people pick for unacceptable risk to life and limb is on a wide distribution, so P(I_will_think_x_is_dangerous|someone_told_me) is very low.
And in the end, I've written a lot of code for a lot of people and have led successful organizations, so I know I'm not unproductive and I know I'm still not unproductive. So maybe I'm rolling the dice each time, but you know what? The fact that I've done shrooms tens of times, and alcohol hundreds of times, and LSD some ten times, and I'm able to do all of this and still be okay by society's standards has got to set a lower bound on your posterior probability after reading this comment surely.
There's a lot of nutty mysticism surrounding so many completely normal things. It's like in middle school, when we kids were discussing what condoms make you do. Some theories from the time:
- condoms make you want to kiss someone
- some kid heard about another kid's friend who wore a condom and they got a baby as a result
- another kid heard that condoms are a kind of powder
That's the state of the comments here