Get It Together by Jesse Watters

Author:Jesse Watters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

11

The Toad Smoker

Everyone has their vices—booze, tobacco, prostitutes, chocolate, gambling, online shopping. When you need to take the edge off. It’s only human.

Then there’s Hector. He smokes toad venom and comes face-to-face with death itself.

To be fair, Hector doesn’t consider smoking it a “vice.” Yeah, he smokes toad, but he also serves as a spiritual guide for others who want to try it. You don’t actually smoke the toad itself. You smoke the toad’s psychedelic secretion. The indigenous tribes call it “bufo,” and they’re the guardians of the substance. “The keepers of the toad” have used it ritualistically for ages.

This drug isn’t “chill.” It can be terrifying: the small fishing tribes in Mexico who cultivate the “medicine” consider the toad the “God of the underworld.”

“It sounds pretty hefty when you say it like that, but the reason they say that is when you pray with the toad, when you take the toad, you’re briefly allowed to experience the afterlife for a few brief moments, and you come back,” Hector says. The whole process lasts just fifteen to twenty minutes, but it can feel like an eternity. “Scientifically, when you take the 5-MeO-DMT”—that’s the federally prohibited psychoactive chemical in the toad venom—“it turns off your prefrontal cortex,” Hector says. “It stops your ego from thinking. It literally stops your neurons from firing. So, it’s like your brain’s not working correctly. Your consciousness leaves your body. And then once the effects start to wear off and your brain starts to fire again, that’s when you come back.”

“What’s the trip like?” I ask.

“You’re going into the universe, the great void. It’s a beautiful place. You don’t really get quite a lot of visuals. It’s just more of a feeling. Sometimes, if you stare at the sun, the sun’s really important. It’s our biggest portal. So, if you take the medicine and you look at the sun and close your eyes, you can see different colors, and those colors are the way to the afterlife.”

This is not intended to be medical advice. You should ask your doctor if staring directly into the sun is right for you.

“When you take the medicine, you go into a space that for some is quite scary, but for some is the most euphoric, beautiful place you could ever be.”

Smoking toad venom is like an extreme sport. Volcano surfing, paraskiing, ice-climbing, free diving. Ridiculous risk. Not everyone makes it.

Hector’s handsome. A half-white, half-indigenous Mexican kid. Late twenties, trim and healthy, alert. Well-groomed facial hair. He’s light-skinned with dark features, white bandana wrapped around his head, rocking a bright yellow linen Native American–style spread-collar shirt. In his virtual background lurks an enormous toad, peering behind his head, its bulbous glassy eye looming in the Zoom. It’s trippy, man.

He speaks about the toad with a religious reverence: The psychedelic venom is “sacred medicine,” and ingesting it is “praying with the toad.” “The Bible talks about a baptism when you go down, and you’re resurrected. Working with this toad is the true baptism.

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