Can you actually get high from licking a toad?
In 2022, the United States National Park Service published a blurry photo of a toadcaptured by a night-vision wildlife camera and accompanied by a tongue-in-cheek warning:
As we say with most things you encounter in a national park, whether it’s a banana slug, an unknown mushroom, or a big, glowing-eyed toad in the dead of night, avoid licking. THANKS.
It’s true that a certain toad found in the southwest United States and northwest Mexico secretes a powerful psychoactive chemical on its skin — but licking these toads is more likely to send you to the hospital than on a psychedelic trip.
The Colorado River Toad (Incilius alvarius), also called the Sonoran Desert Toad, has poison glands on its head that release the chemical 5-MeO-DMT.
“I think it’s one of the most powerful psychedelics there is,” said David E. Nicholsprofessor emeritus of pharmacology at Purdue University and the first to create a synthetic analogue of 5-MeO-DMT.
5-MeO-DMT is a chemical that exerts its effects by binding to serotonin receptors in the brain. The medication lasts about 15 to 30 minutes and can cause euphoria, feelings of nothingness, near-death experiences, and amnesia. According to Nichols, the drug can even cause a person’s self-esteem to completely dissolve, to the point where the user no longer remembers using a drug.
However, 5-MeO-DMT has no psychedelic effects when ingested orally, so licking the chemical off a toad won’t get you high – that requires more complicated methods such as smoking. Plus, it can be very dangerous to lick these toads, experts warn.
“Licking a toad is forbidden” Haley Dourronpostdoctoral researcher at Linköping University in Sweden, told Live Science in an email. “Even the animals that licked the toad ended up needing emergency medical attention.”
Indeed, Colorado toads also secrete chemicals called cardiac glycosides. These compounds increase the strength of heart Muscle contractions and their effects on heart function can quickly become dangerous, leading to potentially fatal cardiac arrhythmias.
Still, potential health risks haven’t stopped poachers from collecting Colorado River toads with the goal of chemically treating the 5-MeO-DMT on their skin for recreational purposes.
“Toads are systematically removed by poachers to extract their secretions and be trafficked,” Robert Villaa community outreach assistant at the University of Arizona, told Live Science in an email. Colorado River toads are already affected by changes in rain patterns, habitat loss, fungal diseases and pollution, Villa said, and poachers are only adding to the threat to their conservation.
The potential of 5-MeO-DMT
Although obtaining 5-MeO-DMT from wild toads is dangerous and illegalresearchers are interested in the potential of synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, which is related to the psychedelic drug DMT. Compared to more traditional psychedelics such as LSD Or psilocybinRelatively little is known about 5-MeO-DMT and its effects on the brain.
“At this point, more than 100 people have had brain scans during typical psychedelic trips like LSD and psilocybin,” Dourron explained. “There are no published brain scan studies on how 5-MeO-DMT works.”
Reports of traveling with 5-MeO-DMT are often quite distinct from subjective experiences with typical psychedelics. Rather than experiencing classic hallucinations such as fractal patterns, some 5-MeO-DMT users describe experiencing a total “blackout.”
“They might feel like they’ve entered a ‘void’ or feel a sense of nothingness,” Dourron said.
The drug’s strange effects led Dourron to investigate whether the effects of 5-MeO-DMT came from brain pathways similar to those altered in certain types of seizures. Other researchers are exploring the potential of 5-MeO-DMT as an antidepressant. Early data shows the drug improves depressive symptoms within a day, with improvements lasting at least a week after treatment. Compared to other psychedelic drugs being explored for their antidepressant properties, such as psilocybin, the duration of 5-MeO-DMT is much shorter, meaning treatment sessions could be completed more quickly.
“5-MeO-DMT is a very interesting substance, but ultimately I think it probably obeys a different set of rules than other, more studied psychedelics,” Dourron said. “Only science will tell us what this manual is.”
This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to offer medical advice.
