In the first draft the toad glands enter the brain directly. The cosmic journey begins. The mouth dries out and the cheeks swell. The feet float inside a blurry bubble, with an almost orgasmic sensation by stroking the wet grass with the fingertips. The senses skyrocket. The body is released. In the background, the Icarian chants , typical of the indigenous shamans, accompany the catharsis that Aristotle described in his Poetics : a bodily and mental cleansing.
It is what smoking has what is popularly called the molecule of God . The dissected secretion of the glands - and venom - of Bufo alvarius , one of the 463 varieties of toad that exist in Mexico, endemic to the Sonoran Desert, where it lives underground most of the year. Its parotid glands contain a cocktail of psychoactive alkaloids, especially dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a natural compound - and hallucinogen - that induces visions. This causes an altered state of consciousness that today helps a few psychiatrists treat depressions and drug addictions. Others, fake healers, are used to set up a dangerous business taking advantage of the vulnerability of those who seek to cure their nightmares irresponsibly using what the wise men of the tribes call indigenous technologies .
The cosmic journey with the bufo ends at 15 minutes. Fast and deep And it has not been necessary to go to Mexico or do shamanic tourism to try it. These days, in an estate on the outskirts of Barcelona, outdoor ceremonies are held to smoke the bufo. Because these types of substances, which were already used by Native Americans centuries ago, have now become fashionable in Europe. Both in the scientific and spiritual fields. Also as a fashion medicine in the new age of the therapeutic community.
The facilitator - and guru - of this poison of the toad is a Mexican surgeon from Jalisco (thus presented) called Octavio Rettig . He has been working with the therapeutic use of the toad glands for eight years. His clients attend their ceremonies and spiritual retreats of four days in groups of no more than 10 people. Many of those who spend these weeks in Barcelona to see him are people with drug addictions. Others are curious - doctors, scientists, businessmen ... - who come to the toad's call in search of a psychedelic trip, live an experience in which to dive through the senses and memories.
The ceremonies are done outdoors, in front of the sun, and attendees usually leave a generous tip (which exceeds 100 euros ) to their guru , who attends each person individually and facilitates the poison with a glass applicator. The trip is very variable: from five to 20 minutes. Some cry. Others laugh. And finally there are those who shout expelling all the rage accumulated.
“It's about people inhaling the steam produced by the combustion of the dissected secretion of the bufo glands. Unlike other ancestral medicines (such as ayahuasca ), it is not about the contemplation of visions but about the experience of dissolution of the personality, of the perception of the body that keeps us confined, ”explains Crónica Octavio Rettig. «My mission is to improve people's lives. I have treated priests and nuns, engineers and doctors, I have even gone to jails for prisoners to prove it. Even celebrities like former boxer Mike Tyson have boasted in their social networks the smoked consumption of the Sonoran toad.
Rettig is 40 years old, lives in the Mexican town of Tepotzotlán and is now touring Europe making spiritual retreats. It is the fifth consecutive summer that comes to Spain to do its ceremonies. His story is that of a polytoxicomaniac ("He was addicted to everything, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin ... he smoked crack day and night. I lost everything, until I discovered the toad") who in 2011 smoked the poison for the first time of the bufo thanks to a friend of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Guadalajara who tried to help him out of addictions. Then, he says, he went to live a season with the indigenous people of the Seri (in Sonora). "They rescued me," says Rettig. «Once a year I go to Sonora to collect the poison of the toad, in the monsoon rainy season, when amphibians are on the surface. There I extract the secretion of the toads, bursting the pimples they have on the skin, and then I release them. The substance dries and is ready to ingest, ”he explains.
DANGEROUS BUSINESS
When asked about this new toad fever in the West, where we find bufo poison for sale on the Internet, Rettig recognizes that there are many hunters who go to Sonora to catch amphibians and market them without any control. On the internet it is easy to buy the poison , although normally what comes to you are several mixed psychoactive substances and you don't really know what you are getting into.
«I am working with the United Nations section of Venezuela and with Johns Hopkins University (United States) doing studies confirming that this substance improves depression and anxiety, says the Mexican surgeon. «And that is only the beginning because these are the first studies of the toad glands, which not only contain DMT but other natural alkaloids. We are moving towards a new field of ethnopharmacology ».
-There are many who consider it a very dangerous drug ...
-In society there is a prejudice to any psychoactive because we have been educated to have it. Only tobacco, alcohol and pills prescribed by health professionals are accepted and well seen. Everything that comes from traditional empirical knowledge is seen as witchcraft, as quackery, as something negative, diabolical. And this comes from the imposition so that we all think the same for control purposes. The example is now with cannabis, which was stigmatized for hundreds of years and today science is confirming that this plant is healing thousands of people with conditions such as cancer and epilepsy.
The qualifier that accompanies substances such as bufo changes depending on who is asked. The natives say that, used responsibly, it can be a very powerful medicine. From the Ministry of Health they warn of the widespread consumption in Spain of this poison in ceremonies guided by "charlatans" who are only interested in taking money.
Scientists point to two things: how misused, bufo can be very dangerous, or that it can be a drug that serves to fight against other drugs ... Maybe everyone is right.
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