The Colorado River Toad: Nature's Gift of 5-MeO-DMT

Perhaps the most interesting psychoactive substance on earth involves neither a plant nor substance concocted by human laboratories. The substance is known as 5-MeO-DMT and one of the most potent sources for the psychoactive is an animal. To be more exact, the source in question is actually a toad.

The bufo alvarius or Colorado River Toad is a venomous amphibian that contains concentrated quantities of 5-MeO-DMT as well as another less-potent psychoactive substance known as bufotenin. The toad is indigenous to areas of the Sonoran Desert in Southeastern California, Southern Arizona, and Southwestern New Mexico. The toad relies on water for part of its life cycle, so does not live far from shallow pools and streams. Human intervention in the form of irrigation in the Sonoran Desert has actually benefited this particular toad and increased the size of its niche within the ecosystem. The Colorado River Toad is also the largest North American toad.

The truly unique quality of the Colorado River Toad is the contents of its venom. Through specialized glands on its back, the toad can secrete a milky substance when threatened by predators or prodded by man. This milky secretion contains high levels of 5-MeO-DMT and is what is collected by recreational users. The venom can be collected without harming the toad, although the toad takes significant periods of time to produce more venom in its glands.

5-MeO-DMT is structurally similar, though quite different from the more commonly known psychoactive drug, DMT. Furthermore, DMT is currently a schedule 1 controlled substance in the United States and is illegal to sell, possess, or use. On the other hand, 5-MeO-DMT is relatively unknown, and knowledge about the substance and the Colorado River toad is limited to its sort of cult status within the drug-using community. 5-MeO-DMT shows its psychoactive properties in doses as small as three-to-five milligrams, and a single toad can yield nearly seventy-five milligrams of the substance in a single milking.

An interesting fact about 5-MeO-DMT is that it cannot be activated orally or released in the digestive tract. Thus, many rumors about hippies licking toads are largely false. After it is collected from the venom glands of the Colorado River Toad, the 5-MeO-DMT is evaporated down to its crystallized form and smoked. Similar to Salvia Divinorum, this psychoactive substance does not produce lasting effects, and peaks in ten to fifteen minutes. Although the effects are similar to hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and peyote cacti, the shorter duration and intensity of a 5-MeO-DMT puts it in a class by itself.

Colorado River Toads are not regulated in the United States, although apparently in California it is illegal to sell them. 5-MeO-DMT is not scheduled by the Drug Enforcement Agency as a controlled substance, although users could possibly be prosecuted under the US Federal Analogue Act due to its structural similarity to DMT. The legality of 5-MeO-DMT seems to stem from the fact that it is commonly harvested from an animal and not a plant. If the DEA declared the substance to be illegal, it would have to employ similar tactics to the Colorado River Toad as it does to plants like Cannabis. Animal rights groups and the Department of Environmental Protection would not stand for the wholesale destruction of an entire species, so it seems likely that 5-MeO-DMT will remain legal for quite some time.

Once again, nature has given man something that he can collect for his own benefit without harming the environment in which he finds it.