I exhale the thick, brackish smoke. I gently collapse onto a blanket spread across hardwood. Ethereal, new-agey folk music plays in the background; a kind voice intones lyrics from Rumi. (“Don’t / Go back / To sleep.”)

I begin to daydream. And then I disappear, as quickly and mysteriously as I arose.

5-MeO-DMT is the poison from bufo alvarius, a/k/a the Colorado River Toad, a/k/a the Sonoran Desert Toad, a chill little guy who spends about ten months a year in hibernation. It is not the same thing as DMT, and there is significant danger in confusing the two. Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls named one of his solo projects after it. Ashley Booth knows more cool stuff about it than I do.

How I Queued Up to Ride the Toad

I have spent most of my life hobbled with chronic depression. I have tried dozens of antidepressants, attempted suicide three times, been hospitalized once, drank myself nearly to death, and invested a lot of time and money to experiment with one or another potential panacea for my gloom.

Lately, I’ve developed a keen interest in psychedelics as a treatment modality for mental illness and the grainy B&W misery of “dry drunk” addiction. So has everyone else, it seems.

After a long dormancy, psychedelics are back on the block. Microdosing is pushed by Ayelet Waldman as an experimental treatment for anxiety and depression, and by Tim Ferriss as an essential tool in every hard-charging tech entrepreneur’s skillset. I’m surprised Kyle Broflovski hasn’t tried ayahuasca.

Here come the requisite caveats. Because I live in a large city, I have found it relatively easy to find the stuff, meet people who appreciate its danger and potential, and try it in gentle, safe, ceremonial settings. The experience can be challenging without being bad, but it can also be both. If you have submerged personal demons, this could dredge them up. If you buy it off the dark net and administer it without the right guidance, you can wreck your life.

Your mind is all you have. Treat it well and have fun with it.

Anyway, What’s It Like?

After the initial dose, nothing much happened. I expected to get a hole blown through my skull and was surprised at how much the experience felt like a day at the office.

At the higher dose, I slumped back. I felt very heavy and sensual. And although it wasn’t the FX bonanza I expected — 5-MeO-DMT is light in that department compared to some of its flashier cousins — some things definitely were happening.

The visuals rushed in, but were too mild and abstract to be called hallucinations. I saw spinning lollipop wheels, waving rainbow flags of sheet music crashing into shores, and a fat toad making laconic wisecracks. Although I didn’t understand what the toad was saying — it had a cryptic sense of humor — I realized it was there to remind me of something I already knew.

And then I asked a question of myself.

Who is the person who is seeing these things? Who is Toady’s interlocutor? Where is that ego I know so well, that shows up wherever I go?

I did a quick scan for it, and I couldn’t find anything. My ego was out to lunch. I was out of the room and out of the picture.

Point at objects around the room. And then point toward your face. What, precisely, are you pointing at?

(These exercises might give you a soft idea of what this was like.)

I had believed that the ego, the self, in the way that we understand it, is an illusion. There is no one witnessing what we understand as human experience; it is simply happening. But this was my first visceral experience of not being a self. Only the experience itself remained.

It was a glimpse of… something… else.

Before the fireworks show, my trip sitters gave me some sage advice. I am going to paraphrase it. Their version was nicer.

As this is going on, you are going to see a lot of intense, crazy shit. And you are going to think you have a lot of interesting things to say about it. But you don’t. You aren’t going to be able to do it justice. You are just going to say, “fuck,” over and over. My advice is to keep your mouth shut. You will save us all some embarrassment.

The experience was, indeed, ineffable. I am as frustrated now as I was then in my attempts to describe it, or to record and transmit whatever it was that I learned.

But…

In the days and weeks ahead, I noticed differences, subtle, at first. I looked around for the bags full of the familiar weight of depression. I searched my soul for the scorching anger that has smoldered there since childhood. I put out my hands to see if I could feel the familiar walls of the grey iron rat maze I inhabit. And I couldn't find anything.

Right Intent, From the Jump

Let’s go through this again.

This stuff is potentially dangerous and definitely illegal, and set and setting are beyond crucial. But if you’re curious and pure of heart and intent, and you know what you’re doing, I won’t discourage you from riding the toad.

It is way too intense to be addictive. The experience has zilch in common with those of booze, cocaine, opiates, or any other common drugs of abuse, except that if you‘re dumb enough to drive, I can’t help you.

If you’re afraid of going crazy, sit with that fear, but don’t let it stop you. Time is compressed, but it’s over in an hour and you’ll make it to your dinner reservation. You may find more gentle and fluid conversation than what you’re used to.

What we think of as reality is one way looking at the world, among numerous alternatives. Sometimes it’s convenient. Sometimes it behooves you to try another view.

I heard it from a psychedelic toad, so you don’t have to take my word for it.