MEXICO NEWS: Sonora’s traditional toad medicine ‘removes the madness from your mind’

A psychedelic found in the glands of the Sonoran Desert toad brings people to Punta Chueca every year

Dozens of people from Mexico and abroad traveled to a small coastal town in Sonora earlier this month to celebrate the new year for the indigenous Seri culture and learn about and take a very unique “medicine” – psychoactive toxins emitted by the Colorado River toad.

Held in Punta Chueca, a Seri town on the Gulf of California 140 kilometers west of Hermosillo, the event attracted citizens from the United States, Europe and several Mexican states.

The key attraction was the opportunity to try 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic of the tryptamine class found in the glands of the toad, also known as the Sonoran Desert toad or bufo alvarius.

The substance is considered an ancestral medicine with the capacity to treat a range of physical, emotional and spiritual ailments. It is commonly dried, mixed with tobacco and smoked to trigger “a powerful religious-like trip that lasts about an hour,” according to the web site Addiction Center.

It’s an anti-hallucinogen, it’s something that will remove the madness from your mind, everything that removes you from the here and now, everything that is not real,” he said.

“The bufo alvarius lives buried [beneath the ground] 10 months a year and in the rainy season it comes to the surface to reproduce, eat and share this ancestral medicine with us,” Rettig said.