THE EXCITING HISTORY OF THE MEDICINE OF THE BUFO ALVARIUS TOAD: WHO DISCOVERED IT? HOW DID IT EXPAND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD?

With all the love I feel towards bufo alvarius and all those who have contributed to spreading this secretion throughout the world, which in addition to being a psychotherapeutic medicine is an authentic sacrament of communion with the Totality, I have allowed myself to trace its trail to its origin. With the help of all the documentation I have compiled and all the friends I have met in all these years working with her and spreading the word about her benefits. Thanks to the toad that we must honor by taking care of it for the kindness of offering us that medicine that it conceives and cooks in its parotid glands during the nine months it spends incubating underground.

I am not the only one who has felt this call to write the story up to its beginnings in summary form, for the complete story I would need to write an entire book and even then it would not be complete in all its details and people who significantly influenced it. I thank Mario Garnier for his historical research work that has largely inspired this work along with my experience and other documents and testimonies that I have collected.

The psychedelic toad Incilius Alvarius, a semi-aquatic amphibian, lives naturally in the Sonoran Desert, which extends from northwestern Mexico to the Southwestern United States. It can be found in desert areas near water areas or in towns near light posts or where there are light bulbs on, since there it finds insects to feed on. It can also be located near natural and artificial bodies of water such as calmly flowing streams, stagnant rainwater and various puddles. It comes out of hibernation in the rainy season, that is, from July to September, with the aim of reproducing. Due to the intense heat of its habitat, it is more easily found at night.

Until 1965, this little toad lived quietly as far as possible, it only had to deal with urban growth like the rest of the animals in the area. However, the Italian pharmacologist Vittorio Erspamer (recognized for having discovered serotonin and a great student of the therapeutic properties of peptides from the Amazonian kambo frog) published research (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6053590 /)in which he detected alkaloids in the skin of the Bufo Alvarius toad. From that moment on, the world knew that this amphibian had several alkaloids, including 5-MeO-DMT; but it was not until 1976 when Cannon and Hostetler published a scientific document that identified this substance in the parotoid glands of this little toad: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1254079/

In 1979, the famous book "Plants of the Gods" by Albert Hoffman and Richard Evan Shultes was published, where it is mentioned on page 22 that the bufo alvarius toad contains high concentrations of 5-meo-dmt in its glands, although it is not mentioned. from a practice of smoking its secretion. Later Terence Mckenna (the greatest promoter of DMT) talks in a video about the 5meodmt of the toad but does not refer to any of his experiences with it.

5-MeO-DMT is a powerful psychedelic substance. It is also found naturally in our body, in small quantities. It is a neuromodulator, a neurotransmitter of neurotransmitters that takes the brain out of cortisol survival mode and into an oceanic contemplation mode.

Although it is a natural substance, it was first discovered by man synthetically: In 1936, Japanese scientists Toshio Hoshino and Kenya Shimodaira synthesized it for the first time. However, man has used 5-MeO-DMT naturally since ancient times in ancient medicines such as vilca, epená and virola.
It is also found in the chalipanga or chagro leaf, which is one of the two ingredients along with the caapi vine of the Amazonian drink yagé (Colombian ayahuasca).
Yopo also contains 5-MeO-DMT, but recent research has shown that although this psychoactive element contains 5-MeO-DMT, it is practically in zero and insignificant quantities, however it does contain considerable amounts of bufotenine (5-HO-DMT ). Ironically, the secretion of the toad Bufo Alvarius, now called Incilius Alvarius, contains virtually no bufotenin (5-HO-DMT) but considerable amounts of 5-MeO-DMT. The main difference between Bufo alvarius toad venom and synthetic 5-MeO-DMT is that the former contains a range of pharmacologically active compounds in addition to 5-MeO-DMT. These include cardioactive agents such as bufagines (i.e., bufandienolides), catecholamines, such as epinephrine and norepinephrine, indolealkylamines, such as bufothionine, serotonin, cinobufotenin, bufotenin, and dehydrobufotenin, and non-cardiac sterols, such as cholesterol, provitamin D, gamma sitosterol, and ergosterol, a total of 21 compounds that work together (Erspamer et al., 1965; Erspamer et al., 1967; Chen and Kovarikova, 1967). It is currently unknown whether any of these additional compounds synergistically modulate the effects of 5-MeO-DMT in ways that would be relevant for therapeutic applications. Research on the “entourage” effects (all its components work optimized together rather than isolated) of toad venom would be of fundamental scientific interest, since its pharmacological constellation can optimize therapeutic results. It is true that the mental health improvements that have been associated with 5-MeO-DMT were similar for users of toad venom and synthetic versions of 5-MeO-DMT, suggesting that 5-MeO-DMT is the main compound with therapeutic potential (Uthaug, Lancelotta, Szabo, et al., 2020 ; Uthaug et al., 2019 ; Davis et al., 2019 ).» It seems paradoxical to try to point out which of these two substances is more complete to take you to Completeness, but in my experience bufo alvarius is a master key that makes it much easier.

When the toad's secretion is dried and then vaporized and inhaled, it offers the possibility of accessing an oceanic experience of dissolution of the ego in the Totality of Absolute Love, the transition of which, for some, means feeling like crossing the threshold of death towards the dissolution of time. and in space in the Eternity of the Infinite in a continuous expansive and at the same time complete explosion that some describe as a cosmic orgasm once the anguish of the liberation of control and the dissolution of the mind and its coordinates in the misterium tremendum have been passed, in the creative Source. An experience of rebirth that transforms the outlook on life and death, the peak experience of unity that reconnects us with existence from gratitude, reconciliation and full trust.
Returning to chronological history, it is not known for certain (yet) what happened between 1965 and 1983 as to who was the first human to smoke or vaporize psychedelic toad secretion, but so far the credit goes to a man under the alias “Albert Most” (whose real name is Ken Nelson), who published a pamphlet in English in 1983 called: “Bufo Alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert”, in which he explains in detail where to look and how to recognize the toad, as well as extraction techniques for the psychonautical use of its secretion using a pipe. In this pamphlet it is clear that Most is the founder of the “Church of the Toad of Light.” He was this scientist supposedly the first to whom it occurred to smoke the secretion of the bufo alvarius. This is stated in the episode of Hamilton Pharmacopeia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMA1_PdgRQ&t=29s For many years it was not known who Albert Most was and even two people presented themselves as impostors saying it was them, without However, at the second international congress of Bufo Alvarius in Mexico City, a man presented himself with the original pamphlets of the Church of the Toad of Light and on behalf of Ken Nelson, who was finally located and interviewed.

Nelson's interest in B. alvarius arose when he read an article in a 1981 issue of Omni magazine that discussed an archaeologist's excavation of toad bones. Fascinated by the indication of indigenous use of the animal, Nelson began independent research that took him to Gila, Arizona, to find the source. An updated edition of his pamphlet states:

In the Department of Life Sciences at the University of North Texas, Ken Nelson came across the work of Italian toxicologist Dr. Vittorio Erspamer, whose exhaustive chemical analysis of toad venoms showed that among the 40 species he analyzed of the genus A single Bufo, Bufo alvarius (syn. Incilius alvarius), was capable of biosynthesizing 5-MeO-DMT.
In Gila, Arizona, Nelson found the toad and smoked its dried poison; he is apparently the first person in the modern era to do so.

Concern for the population of the species prompted Nelson to try to develop a chemical synthesis process for the secretion of bufo alvarius. The biosynthesis of 5-MeO-DMT would allow access to the therapeutic benefits of the compound and, at the same time, protect the toad from overexploitation. For more than twenty years, Nelson lived at a decommissioned missile base in Denton, Texas, where he researched and worked toward this goal.

Hamilton Morris, the chemist featured in the psychedelic docuseries Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, attempted to discover who the real Al Most was. During the search for him, some impostors claimed to be the famous author. Among them was Alfred Savinelli, a scholar of native plant use whom Morris had mistakenly exposed as the real Al Most in a 2017 episode.

Nelson's identity remained a mystery to the public until the third season premiere of Hamilton (2020). Nelson had written a note to Morris after the 2017 episode aired that said:

«Hello, Hamilton, I heard you were looking for Albert Most. Maybe I can help you fill in the missing pieces of your puzzle. I'm Albert Most. I wrote about the toad. I smoked the toad poison. I'm Albert Most. Let's talk someday. Ken, Denton, Texas. In the episode, Morris repents for his typo and recounts Nelson's legacy, documenting his decades of research and defense of Bufo with the help of his friends Gail Patterson, Hollis Whitson, and Scott Sellers. Morris then completed a laboratory synthesis of 5-MeO-DMT (covered here by Psychedelic Science Review) and republished Bufo's pamphlet under Nelson's real name. Sales of the first reprint raised $35,000 for research into Parkinson's disease, which took Nelson's life in October 2019. https://psychedelicreview.com/person/ken-nelson/

Ken Nelson had the idea of ​​smoking bufo alvarius secretion when he learned that it had 5meodmt, perhaps he extracted it from the Church of the Tree of Life in which synthetic 5meodmt was smoked as a sacrament, which in turn was surely inspired by Nick Sand who He was the first to think of smoking tryptamines. Nick Sand had a revelation when he had taken 300 microns of LSD in which he felt he should synthesize DMT and other tryptamines and smoke them, perhaps he was also the first to smoke 5meodmt. 5meodmt can also be inhaled, this led Ralph Metzner to do the first scientific study with bufo alvarius secretion but snorted although later they realized that it had a certain degree of toxicity and began to study it by smoking it, he left these studies in his book "The toad and the jaguar", since jaguar is what they called the synthetic 5meodmt.

We also don't know if it occurred to someone else before or at the same time somewhere else to smoke the secretion. From 1983 we have a following document in a 1994 New York Times article where it talks about how a facilitator named White Dog facilitated this medicine in the Tucson desert https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/05 /magazine/smoking-toad.html this article is complemented by this more recent one: https://doubleblindmag.com/sonoran-desert-toad-colorado-river/ White Dog got his name from a peyote vision in the Church “ The Peyote Way Church of God” founded by Immanuel Trujillo, (https://peyoteway.org/immanuel-trujillo/) who was a Vietnam veteran and received many soldiers with trauma to help them heal with entheogens, he was the one who shared the existence of the medicine from the bufo alvarius toad to White Dog. Trujillo was from Texas like Ken Nelson (Albert Most), perhaps they met in person or he just read his pamphlet.

There is no data yet in this time frame of American facilitators who crossed the border and shared the toad medicine with anyone in Mexico.

In 2004, an artisan named Corvis crossed the US border from Southern California to Mexico in search of the toad. (Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3etkyvksRc&t=4s)
He had read about it and with a photo he started looking for it. First he finds dead toads, then some live ones, he collects them to milk them and dries the medicine which he smokes the next night, accessing an experience of dissolution that leaves him amazed. He collects more medicine and begins to share it with his friends and with the people who come to him or where he travels, however, he does not say which toad it comes from in order to avoid knowing his whereabouts and due to the risk of being It can bother the animal a lot if it becomes known. He told a close friend of his named Evans where the toads were and they went together to collect it in Sonora along with another friend. Evans had been amazed by the experience and had begun to travel performing ceremonies with it. Corvis used to go to Mexico City and Evans to Monterrey.

It was in San Luis de Potosí, land of Hikuri (peyote) medicine where Evans shared the medicine with doctor Gerardo Rubén Saandoval (Dr. Gerry) who was going through a crack addiction and from which he freed himself through a large part of his experiences with bufo alvarius. In turn, Dr. Gerry shared it with his then friend, Dr. Octavio Rettig Hinojosa, who also had a crack addiction and who, after a process of several sessions with Bufo Alvarius, freed himself. Both had already had experience with other psychedelics but toad was crucial for them. Octavio tells his story in his book: "Bufo Alvarius: the toad of dawn" and Dr Gerry in his book "The bufo codex" and "The god molecule"

One day Evans' girlfriend falls ill and due to her lack of resources, Dr. Gerry helps her and in return receives knowledge of the hitherto mysterious whereabouts of the toad in the desert where he goes with the purpose of collecting this very important medicine for humanity. He is accompanied for the first time to collect it and begins to hold his own sessions with the purpose of expanding it as much as possible.
Octavio Rettig also begins to collect it and distribute it everywhere. Through Ceci, Octavio's partner at that time, he meets Luis Ogarrio and his partner Odily. They were in contact with the Coomcac and other desert tribes. Luis had been experimenting with psychedelics with a Seri by giving him sessions and they felt that it would be a good idea for a town close to the toad to guard it, collect it and adopt its use. Rather than adopting it, it was stated that they actually remembered it because the toad was a being of great importance in their mythologies and it was investigated that perhaps it was used ancestrally but its use was lost in the middle of the conquests of the colonizers. That is why it was called “ancestral rescue” medicine, because the tribes would have been reconnected with it again. This would also provide legal protection as it would be like that of ancestral medicines in the territories where the indigenous peoples who use them live. Octavio would later be granted a role by the Seris (his original name is coomcac since “seris” means dogs of the desert) with the blessing of representing and sharing the knowledge of this medicine in the world, the role served as the basis for a kind of
“safe conduct” that he would receive from the United Nations Association of Venezuela later and with which he would travel on tour to various places in the world.
When Octavio first arrived in Punta Chueca, in 2011, Jesús Ogarrio, Luis Ogarrio's family, was conducting an ethnographic study of Seri rituals for his bachelor's thesis. Ogarrio, who is now a professor, remembers Punta Chueca as a ghost town, with the government houses on the verge of collapse and its few public spaces invaded by methamphetamine addicts. He estimated that, of the approximately four hundred residents, dozens were addicts. “It was a pandemic of addiction,” Ogarrio said.
Octavio had formed a clinical project at the Otac Foundation from which the native peoples of Sonora were supported to give toad medicine to those addicted to crystal meth and thus help them free themselves. The first of them all was Ray. Otac was the name by which the toad was known in the tribe. This is the story of the Otac foundation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwRy9UB-eW4&t=1975s

The head of the Seri council of elders was a man named Antonio Robles, who spoke little Spanish and had at least two adult children addicted to methamphetamine. On Octavio's first visit to the Seri, he served sapo to one of Robles' sons. Several elders of the tribe also tried the medicine and some of them experienced piercing visions. “When I smoked the toad, I remembered the story,” Pancho Barnett, whose late father was a revered shaman in the community, told me.
Robles signed formal letters and certificates declaring Octavio “medicine man” and allowing him to serve toad to the tribe. Octavio moved to Punta Chueca, where he and Ogarrio, the only outsiders in the community, shared a room. Octavio also introduced medicine a few months later to the Yaqui tribe.

At that time, Octavio began to wonder if the indigenous communities of Sonora had ever used toad medicine. Mexico is home to numerous shamanic rituals involving psychoactive substances, such as psilocybin mushrooms and peyote. One of Octavio's uncles was an archaeologist who had excavated Aztec artifacts, and David was also studying archeology. They told Octavio about a rich archive of iconography in Mesoamerica: ceramics, paintings, pipes decorated with toads. He became convinced that at least one of the Sonoran tribes had, at some point, performed rituals with toads. This collection of archaeological data with which he supports his theory can be seen in this presentation: https://youtu.be/Y291Sy-PqLs?si=fPv2OxXvO529YW1Z In this other recent video Octavio Rettig states that Ken Nelson may have been inspired to discover the secret extraction through an archaeological discovery of a ceremonial burial of toads by the Cherokee Indians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT33VfHbsjk
Octavio Rettig also began to travel around Mexico sharing medicine, on one of those trips giving sessions in the Riviera Maya he met some people who invited him to the Burning Man festival where he went in 2013 and gave a lecture to the public: https://youtu .be/UdcrwPbuiAE?si=LHbwPlkbHUuXblGG

There, as it is a meeting with people of many nationalities, people from all over the world who marveled at the experience will be invited to their lands to share the medicine with more people, starting from that moment the international expansion of our beloved bufo alvarius medicine. In 2016, the Vice documentary “The Toad Prophet” was published, which will bring a great expansion through the Internet of the existence of medicine, in which something of its history is told, its method of collection and the reporter's own experience with the secretion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubMhWIutI4&t=391s

That video was the one that I, Sergio Sanz Navarro, saw and why I decided to include a visit to the Sonoran Desert with Dr. Octavio Rettig as part of my initiation and entheogenic research trip that I made to Mexico from Spain and in which I traveled among many other places, the Wirikuta desert in Real de Catorce, the spiritual cradle of peyote in Mexico, and the town of Huautla de Jimenez in Oaxaca, spiritual cradle of psilocybes and Maria Sabina mushrooms.

I had already tried synthetic 5-meo-dmt but I had not completely let myself go, I had not allowed myself to cross the mental threshold of control, “madness” and death. Octavio picked me up with a friend of his at the airport and we went to Punta Chueca, to the beach in front of Shark Island, I was the first. I smoked it and screamed, I turned around and told Octavio “I'm afraid” and he told me “don't be afraid, everything is freedom” and I felt a light of peace flood over me and a huge smile spread across my face. I had no plans to smoke it again but I had yet to try salvia divinorum and Octavio told me that he had it and that I could go to his house the next day so I went there and smoked it, then I experienced total amsesia, the experience of not- being, of total absence of meaning. I came back from the experience and told him “I have forgotten who I was”, so he gave me the “Brazilian snuff of the warriors” and he told me now the toad, and I said “no” “no”, “yes” yes”, “well yes” and there I smoked and lived the deepest spiritual experience of my life, my mind completely dissolved, and after releasing the anguish and dissolving into the immensity I felt the ecstasy of absolute peace, breathing with the entire universe in an absolute reconciliation with Everything.
So I told him: “brother, I want to expand this throughout the world” and he told me “that's what we're working on”, “well, I'll help you” I told him, we'll all do it together. At that time I was working at Ayahuasca International, the largest organization dedicated to the psychotherapeutic expansion of ayahuasca in the world and fascinated by the expansive pulse of its founder and my friend Alberto Jose Varela, I felt that if he tried it and with the advertising structure and from the retreats I had I could see my dream come true. At that time there was great controversy over the fact that Alberto was one of the first people who shared ayahuasca without adhering to a tradition and although Octavio did not feel comfortable with that, he agreed to pass through Madrid as part of his trip to Spain from the spirit. not to deny anyone medicine. Everyone on the team smoked it, including his wife, but for some reason Alberto did not smoke it and in fact he never smoked it. His body stopped beating in October 2023 due to a brain tumor. He was a man of great courage. and confidence that greatly contributed to the expansion of bufo alvarius. I insisted a lot on incorporating him to the point that Hugo Oklander from the team gave me the nickname “Sapostle” at that time because of the impulse he conveyed that everyone deserved to live something like what I lived and how I encouraged them. One day Alberto Guzman and his wife Yadira Batidas arrived at the organization and wrote to Alberto Varela as a surprise and he brought them on tour for three months around different places in Europe, so the bufo alvarius medicine that was made by the people was included in the retreats. the afternoon the day after taking nocturnal ayahuasca.
As retreats were held in many countries, we were the first to give them in some such as Paraguay or the Ivory Coast in Africa and many other cities. At the end of 2017 I traveled to Argentina and stayed there doing bufo alvarius sessions in many cities in the country and also in the retreats that were organized in Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. In January 2018, while we were giving sessions in Mar del Plata, 40 armed police officers entered and detained us in what was surely the first worldwide raid of an event organized with this medicine. The case was filed a year later due to the absence of a crime against health. publishes, I am very grateful to the wonderful judge who knew how to see in my eyes what we did and from the place of the heart that we did it.

In 2019, Dr. Gerry gave the bufo alvarius to the boxer Mike Tyson, thus jumping the toad's fame to the world of celebrities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p0kWLA4G3w
Also published that year was the first scientific article that demonstrated the therapeutic potential of a single session with the medicine of bufo alvarius, in which Lacelotta and other scientists participated, such as the famous Jordi Riba, a great scientific scholar of ayahuasca:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6695371/
That same year, in August 2019, Mario Garnier convenes the entire community of facilitators, collectors, scientists and other people who benefit and benefactors of bufo medicine at the WBAC (World bufo alvarius Congress), a beautiful experience that I had. the honor of attending as a speaker and in which we all come together to listen to each other to find points of union beyond differences. The documentary “In Search of Bufo Alvarius” was premiered there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6xlmrRI8qE&t=290s and also the Bufo Alvarius documentary “The Underground Secret”: https://youtu. be/u-6-IKlYdow?si=At257ft3ylVTRscG
The congress had a second edition later.
Currently, there are many people who share the bufo alvarius publicly and privately, many people benefit from it but there is still fear among some to tell their testimonies for fear of being judged and compromising their fame. The story of Bufo Alvarius is still being written because it is the story of humanity and we are writing it together. There is so much to tell that I would write hundreds and hundreds of hours but I would not have time to attend to all those who are now willing to live the experience and transform their lives. If you know any information that you want me to add to this story, write to me and I will consider adding it. I have not added any gossip or judgment because the spirit that has guided my writing is the one that floods me: gratitude

Infinite thanks to bufo alvarius, to all of you who contributed to this story and those who are contributing to it, thanks to the Life that manifests itself in this beautiful Universe

Sergio Sanz-Navarro

Lover of life and his poetry, co-founder of FloreSiendo, clinical psychologist and writer

Photos of relevant people in this story

vittorio esparmer

Alberto Most's original pamphlet explaining how to extract and smoke bufo

Ken Nelson (real Albert Most), the first person known to have milked him and smoked him

Mario Garnier on the left (director of the international congress bufo alvarius WBAC and on the right Corvis the first person to squeeze a toad in Mexico and smoke it in 2004

Evans gave the medicine to Dr. Gerry.

dr gerry

octavio rettig

Luis Ogarrio put Octavio in contact with the Seris

Sergio Sanz Navarro on his first trip to Mexico, I took this photo in a hostel in Bacalar a few days after returning from Sonora after smoking bufo alvarius for the first and second time. I smoked it a total of four times in my life.

Alberto Guzman and Yadira Bastidas