"I'm going to give you three small burns on your arm" the healer explains. "Then I'll put the toad venom on the first burn and we'll see if it doesn't give you an adverse reaction before applying it to the other two."
It is eight o'clock in the morning in Pisac, Peru. The frigid air of the cold dawn creeps around my ankles: a hesitant and timid sun fails to raise the temperature. I'm wearing two sweaters, a scarf and a hat, but just the thought of exposing my bare arm to receive the poison makes me shiver. I drink water, more water, lots of water: we've been told to drink two liters to help the process. I haven't eaten anything since two o'clock in the afternoon the day before. I am still tired and a bit feverish after an intense ayahuasca ceremony that lasted until one in the morning. After grabbing a couple more blankets, I tuck myself in as best I can and listen to the healer's instructions.
The Kambó toad, or phyllomedusa bicolor, is known as "the giant monkey frog". It is a nocturnal, arboreal amphibian of the Amazon, whose green color and specific croaking distinguish it from other species. When it feels stressed or threatened, it secretes a colorless venom to protect itself from predators. It is this venom that is used in the Kambó ceremony. The practice for its extraction is somewhat grim: the most common way is to capture the toad, spread its limbs by tying them to four sticks and then inducing fear, so that it secretes the poison. The healers scrape the toad's skin with flat sticks and collect the substance before releasing it.
After the ceremony, I learn that this practice is the fruit of controversy among different groups of animal rights and protection of ancestral rituals. Not only because of the psychological and traumatic shock that this procedure represents on the animal, but also because the growing popularity of Kambó has made the giant monkey frog become an endangered species. It is a controversial topic, although nothing new, which could be summarized in something like: "Western man discovers centuries-old aboriginal traditional medicine, appropriates the drug and abuses it until the natural resources are exhausted" (but that will be a topic for another post).
Now, there is a lot of confusion about the Kambó toad ceremony, its objectives and results. People like Mike Tyson, for example, have become great proselytizers of the "toad", saying that it helped them to improve their lives. In Spain, the Nacho Vidal scandal also brought the toad into the mainstream.
However, in both cases we are talking about another very different toad: the Bufo toad.
The Bufo Alvarius, or Sonoran desert toad, is a typical species of Northern Mexico. Its secretions are highly hallucinogenic since they contain the component 5-MeO-DMT, a dimethyltryptamine much stronger than the DMT that we can get in hallucinogenic mushrooms or even in ayahuasca. The way to ingest the Bufo toad venom is also different: it is usually dried and smoked with metal or glass pipes.
Thus, the Bufo toad produces an effect of dissolution of the personality that is radical, which makes the participant fall to the ground and remain motionless during the whole process, which lasts something like twenty minutes. According to what I am told, the sensation is one of fusion with the environment and disappearance of oneself, which decreases little by little until you "re-enter" into yourself. Nothing better to treat your ego problems than to dissolve all notion of "I", eh?
On the other hand, the Kambó toad is neither psychedelic nor hallucinogenic. Its effects are purifying, cleansing and strengthening the immune system. Our healer even claimed that Kambó had cured his peanut allergy, something that Western medicine does not yet know how to treat.
After all the preparations are made, we set out to receive our respective doses of Kambó on each burn, following the cumbersome work of pulling my right arm out of the two sweaters and three flannels I was wearing under the alpaca fur blanket. Bravely, I stretch out my arm and let him smear the poison on my wounds.
The first thing I felt was a warm and pleasant sensation that invaded my body and went up little by little, until it settled in my head. Then, some pulsations began to get stronger; I had the impression that my skull was beating to the rhythm of my heart and I began to see reddish flashes with each pulsation. I heard someone to my right start to vomit and I braced myself, approaching my bucket.
Since I had purged heavily the night before during a rapé ceremony, my stomach was completely empty. I drank more water, following the healer's advice; my stomach felt upset, but I wasn’t nauseous. It was at that moment that the swelling appeared: my cheekbones got bigger and my mouth got narrower: I was turning into a toad.
Kambó has the characteristic of producing this reaction in certain people, a kind of transformation into an amphibian. This is known as the famous "frog face":
My friends were puking violently, purging all their ills, but my body, cold and shivering, refused to expel anything. I continued to sit, breathing deeply and living my new life as a toad. The healer offered me rapé to help me vomit, which I accepted with some resignation after the experience a few hours before.
I inhaled ground rapé for the second time in less than twelve hours; my head was now swimming in a cloud of tobacco. I coughed, spit into the bucket, took a deep breath… but to no avail. The Kambó purge never came.
The healer offered us tea and explained that it was okay if I couldn't purge, telling me to relax and take it easy for the day. I told him that my body, empty and shrivelled after fasting and purging, had nothing left to give. He smiled.
A half hour later, I sat down to eat nuts and some bread. The effect had worn off and my stomach had calmed down. The Kambó experience was a bit strange, but I found its usefulness as a purifying element after an ayahuasca ceremony interesting. I don't know if I will do it again. Of all the ceremonies in which I participated in Peru, Kambó was the one that I got the least out of. It is the closest to a traditional medicinal approach, focused on the body, without the introspection of ayahuasca or the ego expansion of huachuma. This is why, when I learned that the Kambó toad was becoming an endangered species due to psychedelic tourism, I decided not to do it again.
Thank you, sapo, for your cleansing and your wisdom: I hope we can live in peace, with mutual respect, from now on.