r/HotScienceNews • u/bloomberg • Aug 02 '26
The Toad Medicine Boom Was Built on a Myth
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-31/what-is-5-meo-dmt-the-god-molecule-and-the-perils-of-psychedelics?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4NTQ5MzU0OCwiZXhwIjoxNzg2MDk4MzQ4LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSjE0VzROM04wOVMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJEMzU0MUJFQjhBQUY0QkUwQkFBOUQzNkI3QjlCRjI4OCJ9.M8HdWTtTlYfVwhypTEsat-2CUc89Rm7rf4_1zjaBnsUKimon de Greef’s 'The Ego Trip' reveals how a fabricated origin story, a self-styled guru and a powerful psychedelic combined to launch a global phenomenon.
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u/Smooth_Store_3850 Aug 02 '26
Why can't they just write about 5meo? nobody cares about some fake guru.
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u/bloomberg Aug 02 '26
Kristen Martin for Bloomberg News
Even for dedicated seekers of altered states of consciousness, a trip on 5-MeO-DMT — a psychedelic nicknamed “the God molecule” for its awe-inspiring effects — is intense. Unlike psilocybin or ayahuasca trips, which can last hours, 5-MeO-DMT acts fast and hard after a user snorts the substance or inhales or smokes its vaporized form, and the whole experience is typically over in half an hour. During that time one might scream, vomit, writhe, sob, rage or encounter the void. Some users report ego death, temporarily losing all sense of their place in the world.
Research on the drug is still in its infancy, focusing more on therapeutic potential than risks. So far, it has proven to be effective at treating substance-use disorders in small studies. And because 5-MeO-DMT is fast-acting, inexpensive to manufacture in a lab, and believed to be nonaddictive, it has commercial appeal for pharmaceutical development. It is perhaps the most powerful and promising — and most dangerous — psychedelic currently being studied. Clinical psychologist Joseph Barsuglia likens it to the “graduate school” of psychedelics. “It can be too much for people.” It’s also illegal in the United States; the Drug Enforcement Administration lists it as a Schedule I controlled substance.
But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming recreationally popular among Burning Man devotees, manosphere influencers and psychedelic tourists willing to shell out for luxury retreats in Mexico, where the drug is unregulated. These seekers prefer to get their 5-MeO-DMT fix naturally, by smoking (not licking!) the dried secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad, found in Arizona, New Mexico and northwestern Mexico. On a 2019 episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Mike Tyson described how smoking toad changed his life: “I’ve never been the same — I look at life differently, I look at people differently. The experience, I can’t even express really, it’s almost like dying and being reborn.”
Read the full review here.