In 2022, the U.S. National Park Service posted a blurry photo of a toad taken with a night-vision wildlife camera with a tongue-in-cheek warning:
As with most things you encounter in national parks, whether it’s a banana slug, an unfamiliar mushroom, or a giant toad with glowing eyes in the middle of the night, don’t lick it. thank you.
While it’s true that certain toads found in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico secrete powerful psychoactive substances through their skin, licking one of these toads is more likely to land you in the hospital than going on a psychedelic trip.
The Colorado River toad (Incilius alvarius), also known as the Sonoran desert toad, has poison glands on its head that release the chemical 5-MeO-DMT.
“I think this is one of the most powerful psychedelics that exists,” said David E. Nichols, a professor emeritus of pharmacology at Purdue University who first created a synthetic analog of 5-MeO-DMT.
5-MeO-DMT is a chemical that exerts its effects by binding to serotonin receptors in the brain. This drug lasts about 15 to 30 minutes and can cause feelings of euphoria, emptiness, near-death experiences, and memory loss. Nichols says the drug can completely disrupt a person’s sense of self, to the point where they don’t even remember having used the drug.
However, 5-MeO-DMT does not have any psychedelic effects when taken orally, so licking the chemical from a toad will not get you high. More complex methods are required, such as smoking. Additionally, experts warn that licking these toads can be extremely dangerous.
“Licking toads is a big no-no,” Hayley Duron, a postdoctoral researcher at Linköping University in Sweden, told Live Science via email. “Even pets that have licked toads have required emergency treatment.”
That’s because Colorado River toads also secrete chemicals called cardiac glycosides. These compounds increase the strength of myocardial contractions, and the effects on heart function can quickly become dangerous, causing potentially life-threatening arrhythmias.
But the potential health risks haven’t stopped poachers from collecting Colorado River toads for recreational purposes to chemically treat 5-MeO-DMT on their skin.
“Toads are systematically removed by poachers and their secretions are extracted and trafficked,” Robert Villa, a community support assistant at the University of Arizona, told Live Science in an email. Colorado River toads are already affected by changing rainfall patterns, habitat loss, fungal diseases and pollution, and poachers only increase the threat to toad conservation, Villa said.
Potential of 5-MeO-DMT
Obtaining 5-MeO-DMT from wild toads is unsafe and illegal, but researchers are interested in the possibility of synthetic 5-MeO-DMT related to the hallucinogen DMT. Compared to traditional psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin, little is known about 5-MeO-DMT and how it affects the brain.
“To date, more than 100 people have undergone brain scans during trips that took typical psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin,” Duron explained. “There are no published brain scan studies on how 5-MeO-DMT works.”
5-MeO-DMT trip reports are often quite different from the typical subjective experience with psychedelics. Rather than experiencing classic hallucinations such as fractal patterns, some 5-MeO-DMT users describe experiencing a complete “whiteout.”
“They may feel as if they have entered the ‘void’ or experienced a feeling of emptiness,” Duron explained.
The drug’s strange effects led Dourron to investigate whether 5-MeO-DMT’s effects stem from similar brain pathways that are impaired in certain types of seizures. Other researchers are investigating the potential of 5-MeO-DMT as an antidepressant. Early data shows that the drug improves symptoms of depression within a day, and improvements continue for at least a week after treatment. Compared to other psychedelic drugs that have been studied for antidepressant effects, such as psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT has a much shorter duration, potentially allowing treatment sessions to be completed more quickly.
“5-MeO-DMT is a very interesting substance, but ultimately I think it’s likely to function according to a different set of rules than other more studied psychedelic substances,” Dulong said. “Only science can tell us exactly what this strategy is.”
This article is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice.
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