I'd like to meet and talk with other people who have experienced the Toad Medicine, sometime this week preferably.
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I'd like to meet and talk with other people who have experienced the Toad Medicine, sometime this week preferably.
I just realized the email account I had connected to this site was inactive. I've remedied the situation so if anyone tried to respond privately to this post please try again, I would not have received your first message. My apology.
Well, it has been two weeks since the event that prompted this original entry. Quite a few Waccobites were interested enough to view, none responded, but I’m guessing there is enough interest to justify a recap of my weekend August 20-21.
The Toad Medicine is the dried parotoid gland exudate of the Sonoran Desert Toad, also called Colorado River Toad. It contains about 15% 5-MeO-DMT and a suite of other tryptamines including NMe-5-MeT, 5-MeO-NMT, and Bufotenine according to Shulgin in TIKHAL. The practice of “milking” the toad and vaporizing the product for its profound entheogenic effect has been going on for some time and has prompted absurd reports of toad-licking by crazed hippies, in the typical hyperbolic journalistic style of the mainstream press when reporting on psychedelics. I was not inclined to replace the word psychedelic with entheogenic before this experience, but even the most devout atheist would be hard pressed to deny that the experience is one, if not of divine unity, then of whatever it is enfolded within reality that prophets and seers over the ages have termed as such. Before two weeks ago I did not approve of molesting this endangered amphibian to gain access to a substance for human consumption when there are so many other naturally occurring psychedelics available in the plant and fungal kingdoms. Now I’m thinking that ethical, sustainable harvesting and husbandry of this species is justifiable given the potential for profound and lasting individual and group transformation with the potential benefits to society and the planet associated with proper, respectful use.
Two weeks ago I participated in a remarkable two day ceremony on sacred land with thirty dear and beautiful seekers that probably changed me permanently. The first day was a deeply moving, exorcism inducing, heart opening ayahuasca ceremony. The medicine was strong, the medicine people powerful, and the ceremony perfectly paced. I won’t go on too much about what happened with the Grandmother, since that isn’t the focus of this post but it was part of the process for what followed the next day so it bears hashing out a bit. (Not that kind of hash).potential for profoundThe ceremony was held outdoors around a large fire circle under a canopy of oaks and maples, and during the day, the California sun moving across the sky, flickering through the leaves and branches, while the music played and the medicine worked its magic spell. Like most ceremonies outside the Amazon basin, it was a hybrid that included both traditional and introduced elements. Many of us drank two or more cups. there was a lot of purging, not only of gastrointestinal contents but of deep psycho-spiritual pain. The providers and their helpers performed skillful shamanic healing, there was thrashing, crying, howling, which, as she did her work, performing her life renewing operations, eventually gave way to peaceful sounds of joyful moans, exclamations, laughter, dancing, release. The visions subsided, we convened for a wonderful vegetarian meal provided by our hosts and spent the evening around the fire bonding, hugging, talking quietly confiding our revelations and discussing whether or not to participate in Sunday’s Sapito ceremony. We slept a luscious sleep to the sound of crickets and night birds.
and lasting individual
and group transformation
with the potential benefits to
society and the planet
The following day by mid-morning about twenty of us had gathered, joined by about eight additional folks who had not been part of the previous day’s event. The medicine man and his helpers talked with us about what to expect, what the protocol would be and how to optimize the intake of the sacred vapors. We were led in a session of stretches and pranayama exercises to induce a state of calm relaxation and deep breathing. We gathered in a circle to share intention while the perimeter of the ceremonial space was closed with sacred objects. The space, the participants and the medicine people were all thoroughly smudged and each participant made an offering of tobacco to the fire. We split up into groups of four and five so there would be several people to care for whoever was taking their turn with the medicine. The medicine man began to make his way around the circle, expertly administering the vapor of 80mg of the dried venom to the first person in each group and the results to a casual onlooker would have been somewhat startling.
The first in our group for example, a woman wearing a t-shirt that said Black Rock City Public Works Department, inhaled deeply as she appeared to lose consciousness. We lowered her gently to the mat and watched as her eyes rolled back in her head, her limbs tensed, and she appeared to go into a convulsive state. She thrashed, and howled, limbs flailing, teeth gnashing, she writhed and rolled and fell back trembling and weeping, laughing and moaning and finally lay still, a look of bliss and joy on her face that was positively radiant. After about fifteen minutes from the time of commencement she opened her eyes and sat up, a look of wonder as she looked at each of us and embraced us laughing and crying, thanking us and raising her eyes and arms to the sky, moved aside, shaking her head and chuckling. We left her to compose herself and each took our turn.
“I never would have believedAround the circle similar scenarios were playing out with varying degrees of animation and vocalization. One older man struggled quite a bit and was the only one in the group that vomited during the experience. A man in our group, veteran of two tours during the Iraq War who had lost twenty members of his unit during the battle for Fallujah and was struggling with alcohol abuse lay back and remained still and quiet throughout the entire experience. When he came around he sat up, a look of wonder, and said, “I never would have believed such a thing was possible,” or words to that effect.
such a thing was possible,”
It came to my turn. I was one of the last to go. I’ve had experience with high doses of N,N, DMT and returned trembling and gasping a few times, having witnessed transcendent realities and I had smoked synthetic 5-Meo-DMT with some Yippie friends in a flat on Chicago’s North Side in 1968. It had been profound and overwhelming but neither quite prepared me for what was about to happen. I inhaled deeply from the nifty little vaporizer, watching as the yellowish waxy material in the chamber turned to opaque vapor and cleared from the chamber into my lungs. I got it all in one hit, deep breather that I am. I tried to force it deeper swallowing and inhaling a little more air. Phenomenal reality began to dissolve. From a distance I heard young Ramos, the medicine man (name changed here), say “He’s on the way,” as my friends lowered me. As I lay back, arms and legs outstretched, the last glimmer of event sank into a clear, crystalline, infinite and timeless void. No more me, no here, no there, no this no that, dissolved in the bliss and non-bliss of not being, Wu-chi.
I have no concept for how long it lasted, I had totally surrendered to it, what choice did I have? Then a tremor, a slight move from the depths, spanda. This separated from that, Yin from Yang, they engulfed each other, emerged from each other, turned and caressed each other and began to expand and differentiate, and convolute and expand and expand and I emerged into the implicate order of a divine embrace, the infinite joy of the Union of Shiva and Shakti creating the multiverse, and I expanded into it and when I couldn’t bear it any more expanded past all boundaries and it was excruciating, I couldn’t contain it and I reached out howling and crying and laughing and howling and thrashing, and now there’s more, more, IT CAN’T BE, THERE CAN’T BE MORE, but there is. I’m writhing now, am I foaming at the mouth? I’m shining and radiant and everywhere at once, all heart, all bliss, radiant and infinite. I become aware of the medicine people around me, rattles and chants, mapacho smoke. I’m being swept with feathers, my hands held, my head brushed, my chest thumped, and I release a long deep howl that engulfs me and expands beyond the bounds of time and space and I collapse into joy. In a little bit I sit up laughing and say, “Holy Shit!” and look around at the circle of friends, some laughing, some weeping, some collapsed smiling in chairs and on mats. I reach toward each and every one feeling the purest compassion and love for humanity and the biosphere. The medicine takes me again and I lay back and observe a journey through what I can only describe as a radiant archive of an ancient architecture of information, taking it in without really understanding but not needing to understand.
About a half hour later we were back in our bodies and sitting in a circle taking turns talking for a few minutes about what had happened. We each of us hugged and had some words with each other participant, and the medicine people. The unity we felt transcended age and gender and life history, we were all the same, a patina of light and moment on the body of an ancient being of pure love. We were still shaking our heads, laughing and weeping as we communed for another wonderful meal and eventually made our ways back to civilization, to the mundane and temporal world in which we were now obliged to make something of what had happened, to somehow translate the benefit we had realized into action.
During the following week I had the opportunity to talk about this experience with a number of friends. Each time I tried to describe what had happened, I relived the emotional content, and without fail was moved to“So you were embraced bytears. I would wake in the night in a visionary state, glowing with energy, rock hard erections verily radiating, vibrations emerging and revealing deep meaning in the night. I was highly energized for about ten days, had no desire to do anything to change the way I felt, no cannabis, no alcohol, no substance of any kind. My usual daily practices of morning Tai Chi and evening meditation took on a new depth and effortless sense of absorption. Even now, as I write this I continue to experience the profound nature of that moment.
the divine, so what?”
“So you were embraced by the divine, so what?” to paraphrase Rick Strassman. And that of course is the crux of the matter. Will something that felt so life changing really be, really make a difference. Well, we’ll see. I know a lot of people in the group were dealing with serious problems and dilemmas and each of them in the end were talking not about their personal considerations, but about how to use the experience to improve the world around them, to make some difference, to realize a positive impact, and I have to think some of that will flow from concept to real action. As for me, well, if you see a slightly glowing old bald man somewhere, suddenly chuckling or weeping for no apparent reason, give him the benefit of the doubt. He may have seen God.
Note: Results may vary. This short tale comes nowhere close to describing what happened. The land, the ceremonial space, the participants, the medicine people, the shamanic devices, and the medicine all taken together presented a gestalt that may be difficult to reproduce although from what I’ve seen online, it was not necessarily unique.
Here is Martin Ball discussing the subject: https://vimeo.com/138171763
This writer nails it IMO : https://thepracticaltripper.wordpress.com/why-venom-now/
"You cannot see me with normal eyes, so I give you divine eyes with which to behold the power of my Yoga." Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, The Vision of the Universal Form, verse 8.