The world's only psychedelic animal lives in a cartel zone

The Sonoran Desert toad is the only animal known to make a psychedelic. Its glands secrete 5-MeO-DMT, the compound users call the God molecule. The toad exists only in Sonora, Mexico — so every gram of "toad medicine" sold comes from there. Kimon de Greef spent years following the people who collect them.

Sonora is where the Mexican government sent troops against the cartels in 2006, and the homicide rate tripled in five years. Whole regions became no-go zones. In 2016, the documentary maker Dean Jefferys was out at night looking for toads when armed men pulled him over. "I was staring down the barrel of a gun," he said. Weeks earlier, an American woman searching for toads had been kidnapped and held for days.

In Yaqui territory, the toad is called boboc, and it was once dressed in ribbons and carried in ceremonies asking for rain. The psychedelic practitioner Octavio Rettig milked thousands of toads a summer. 

De Greef points out that synthetic 5-MeO-DMT delivers the same experience without a toad.

Previously:
• National Park Service's toad-licking warning wasn't based on any reports of toad licking
• Smoking toad venom helps veterans with PTSD, addiction, and depression