“Jesus man! You don’t look for acid! Acid finds you when it thinks you’re ready.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
Escape from the United States
I found myself becoming more miserable by the day with the pandemic raging, as lockdowns and aberrant social dynamics strangled the United States. I learned Mexico was welcoming all, no questions asked, so in June 2021, I flew from Austin to Cancun. About a week after landing in Cancun, the bufo alvarius toad leaped into my consciousness, altering my psyche, soul, and life forever.
I embarked on my legendary journey, not at all expecting to cross paths with the bufo toad. I would spend the next five months backpacking across Mexico, from south to north. The goal was to arrive at Ciudad Acuña, cross the border by foot into Del Rio, and catch an Amtrak back to Austin. After a quick night in Cancun and a few in Playa del Carmen, Tulum called.
Crossing Paths With the Bufo Toad in the Road
I got to Tulum, and although I sought some solace and refuge from the chaos enveloping the world, I wasn’t going to find it here. Like Cancun and Playa del Carmen, Tulum still had plenty of hustle and bustle, so any decompression from the pandemic effects in the States got put on hold. In fact, street-side trailers sold rapid PCR tests for Americans flying home.
I felt quite content being here regardless and readied myself to take anything thrown my way in stride, as long as I didn’t have to put up with social isolation and the madness back home. I had no idea what was coming my way.
The sun shone bright, the humidity clung to my body, and I strolled towards the beach road where all the action goes down in Tulum. I had no plans, no destination, no concerns as I people-watched mid-afternoon. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large, white letter ‘T’ mounted to a small post. Another letter followed it—M. Finally, a third letter appeared. The letter D. TMD. Huh?
A split second later, I realized I had read it backward. DMT! I stopped in my tracks to assess the situation and found myself at a bufo center. I had always understood the Hunter Thompson quote, but now his sage words resonated in full. I figured this might be my lone chance in life to do it. I went inside to get the lowdown.
Sizing Up the Toad
I liked the feel of the place. Clean, new, brightly lit, with no shady vibes at all. The staff answered all my questions. They didn’t come across as dodgy. I had already been writing and working in psychedelics for a little while now, so I explained to the staff that I wanted the real deal. I didn’t want to be scammed or worse.
Think about it. Doing the toad alone, at a random, roadside place you find, in the middle of Tulum during a global pandemic might not be the best bet. The staff assured me, and their answers gave me confidence. I told them I needed a little bit of time to mull it over.
The novel possibility broke open my mind. I wanted to somehow guarantee I’d feel safe and secure and trust my shaman. That was impossible. On the other hand, the toad found me, which means something. Even though I brought plenty of previous plant medicine experience with me already, the toad is a different beast.
I knew well of its potency and often read that many consider bufo alvarius stronger than ayahuasca. Despite my ayahuasca experience, and also having consumed straight DMT, bufo made me feel anxious, and scared. Which, in some cases, acts like a healthy sign of respect for a medicine. I hoped for this when I called the center and booked my ceremony.
Bufo Day Arrives
I showed up a couple of days later, well hydrated, only to find out my slot got double booked and I had to wait a few hours. Ugh. The delay itself didn’t bother me, but the extra time could spoil my set. I returned, walked into the jungle, entered a blinding white tepee, and met my shaman. We hit it off with ease.
My shaman, an amiable, young, American man whom I had to trust my soul with, boosted my confidence. We got to chatting and we discovered we had some social circle overlap. The unexpected and welcome connection gave me confidence and comforted me a bit. In an ideal world, I’d prefer to know my shaman like a best friend prior to embarking on a toad journey. Sometimes, we don’t have this luxury. Joseph Campbell might counter by saying “the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
After our chat and a limpia (a spiritual, ritual cleansing), my shaman delivered the instructions as I sat cross-legged on the floor. Overall, I felt good, even though that subtle twinge of doubt wiggled inside. He asked me if I wanted to do a practice run. I declined. After the delay, I didn’t want to have more time to think about it. He handed me the pipe.
5-MeO-DMT Liftoff
He torched the glass, and I inhaled like I have never inhaled before. I held it for a three or four count, then began to pinhole exhale in a slow, deliberate manner for ten seconds. Around three or four seconds into the exhale, Christmas string light-colored, half-dollar-sized hexagons began to materialize inside the tent, along the tepee walls. Shimmering, crisp, and technicolor, the hexagons multiplied and covered the tepee like a psychedelic honeycomb.
I had never experienced open-eye visuals of this intensity or vividness before. And never this fast. I felt the fear surge. The last thing in this world I remember was my shaman taking the pipe out of my hand, saying, “Ok, lie down,” and with absolute gentleness, guiding me down with his hands. My head hit the pillow, I closed my eyes, and the anesthetic psychedelic seized me, as I took off.
I’ve never experienced anesthesia, but I imagine bufo doesn’t stray far. I was still conscious but not at all conscious of this world. From here on out, the time-space continuum collapses into itself, so any accurate sense of time is a fool’s errand. As I felt myself slip away, I felt the fear rear its head. I thought about how fast the hexagons appeared, and I knew this was the real deal. I hoped Hunter’s quote was right, and that the toad knew I was ready.
The Fear Gets up Onto You Fast…and the Awe
The fear provoked a cascade of negative thoughts. Wow, this is too much! How will I handle this? This is too strong. I want out. What am I doing? I’m alone in the jungle of Mexico doing bufo during a pandemic. Where are my friends? I need my mom. I’m crazy. I’m dying. Where’s the emergency eject?
Did those thoughts last a minute? They’d last an eternity if I didn’t get them under control. My set going in was solid, and I knew I’d be challenged. “Adam, you got this. You’re not new to this. Let go.”
That’s the #1 rule with any psychedelic: Let go. Give in to the medicine, let it do what it wants, don’t fight it, and release yourself. I fell into the abyss. The negative self-talk vaporized. I encountered an amorphous, nebulous entity. The roundish energy ball approached me. Black and purple, it looked like the space gas of a stellar nursery. I felt pure omnipotence and omnipresence. Though I had dispatched the negative self-talk, I still had a final hurdle to overcome. I began feeling in awe.
This simultaneous feeling of existential fear/death and the ineffable is true awe. I felt a couple of other things. I picked up on its similarity to straight DMT. Obviously, the toad is stronger by an order of magnitude, and there’s still some familiarity. This soothed me. I also felt a touch of indigenous presence coming from the entity—something ancient, wise, and unknown.
The Bouncer in the Waiting Room and the Breakthrough
I felt as if the entity acted as a doorman or bouncer in a waiting room. I was getting measured up and down the final time. I felt it telling me that I could get crushed in a nanosecond. Do you know what I am? No, I don’t. Then, as I think my soul is about to get vaporized, I sense another presence. The indigenous presence felt related to ayahuasca. Was Mother Aya clearing me for entry? I hope so.
In an instant, any concept of this world evaporated, along with any concept of Adam, who I am, Earth, anything. Was this thirty seconds later? Was this five minutes later? Or was this an eternity from now? Did time even exist? I can say my ego and concept of me disappeared. I felt the breakthrough as I hurtled through infinite consciousness.
Phases of the Journey
Some clever and cool people are studying and developing psychedelic phenomenology. This helps to describe the experience, which takes place in stages. I mentioned three of them: taking off, the waiting room and breaking through/the other side. These phenomenological aspects overlap with a general intensity scale. There’s an excellent video about the 6 levels of DMT here. At this point, level 5 or “heavy” took me for a journey.
After experiencing the absent selfhood, and a number of other phenomena from the psychedelic Subjective Effects Index I began to see and be less defined hallucinations. As noted in the video, my visions were transcendent, incoherent, rapidly shapeshifting, and formless. Unfathomable truth and beauty, infinite geometric shapes and fractals, that led to a sensation of “inextricable unity” to all of mankind and a “deep spiritual reverence to the universe.” The other side felt way beyond DMT and ayahuasca.
Back to Earth
Am I conscious? Am I unconscious? I have no clue. Then boom. Done. My eyes open and I see the inside of the tepee again, absent the hexagons this time. I’m back to “reality” in an instant. No side effects. I feel fine, normal, conscious, not even a wisp of grogginess. Snapped back to baseline like an overstretched rubber band. My shaman welcomed me back.
My Post-Frog Monologue
I lay still for a moment as tears streamed from the corners of my eyes. What I just saw and felt was the most beautiful and truthful thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. After a feeble attempt to sort myself out mentally for thirty seconds, I sat up in a start.
I launched into a manic, hysterical monologue on the meaning of life. Untethered by the blindness of ego, I lambasted materialism, consumerism, status, jobs, money, while praising the truth and beauty at our fingertips. The shaman moved fast to have me lie back down, although he allowed me to continue on my rant.
My third eye never felt so squeaky clean, and I think that allowed me to channel the spirit of Bill Hicks. My diatribe carried on with potent energy and positivity as the tears of bliss and ecstasy rolled down my cheeks. I felt filled with pronoia; the idea that the universe is secretly conspiring to shower you with blessings.
This is what life and humanity’s purpose on Earth is all about. All the rest distracts us and lies to us. The shaman paced around the tepee, absorbing my legendary diatribe, smiling, clapping, and cheering me on. He eventually told me that he felt iboga energy streaming from me.
Back on Earth
Eventually, I got to my feet and thanked him, but to no end. I gave him a giant hug and expressed enormous gratitude for being my soul chaperone. Even though I had been out for twenty minutes, and not moved an inch, walking around felt normal, and without shakiness. I couldn’t believe I had zero lingering effects. I exited the tepee, left the jungle, and walked out onto the street. How was I going to deal with reality after this?
I stepped out onto the sidewalk and began to walk back to where I was staying. Still struck with incomprehensible awe, a gleaming, shit-eating grin unfurled across my face. I didn’t have any inclination to hide it whatsoever. This smile didn’t leave my face for days. Unbeknownst to me, the true mystery had only just begun.
The Real Psychedelic Magic Outside of the Ceremony
Having done psychedelics many times prior, experiencing cosmic truth and beauty during a journey didn’t elude me. When I began working with ayahuasca, the truth and beauty I experienced during the journey started to manifest in my real life. I encountered a significant synchronicity during the integration process, which was a profound experience. However, even this synchronicity did not prepare me for the events that were about to unfold.
Beginning Integration
The cosmic mystery began the next day. I headed down to the beach road to meet up with some local friends I had made. As I waited for them in a sandy passageway in the jungle between hotels and party venues, I spied a cozy, welcoming, and tucked-away clearing in the jungle. I felt something drawing me in. I walked closer and saw something in the tropical overgrowth. The overhanging palm fronds enveloped a homemade wooden bench covered with technicolored hexagons!
It wasn’t just one hexagon, but many of them splashed all over the bench. Then, in my amazement, I looked up and saw a gigantic wooden toucan perched above the bench. It seemed to me that the two must be intrinsically linked and that I would be seeking out the meaning of the toucan for some time. Was the fleeting, shy nature of the toucan a symbol of cosmic mystery?
After the coming days, weeks, and months, I would concur. As I made my way further north, I experienced a string of synchronicities in succession. Each one manifested with more potency, and improbability. Each one surpassed the lottery-winning odds. Maybe not Powerball odds, but it felt like it. State lottery odds for sure.
Each synchronicity occurred when I met a random stranger who had an unknown, inner connection to me that was not evident upon meeting. We would only discover the connection after talking for a while. After four, five, or six of these, I started questioning my sanity and wondered if I was becoming manic.
Questioning Sanity Leads to Revelation
I felt scared for a while. Why was this happening? Why is this happening to me? Am I just losing it and imagining all of this? Am I seeing things that aren’t there? Am I making this all up in my head? Thanks to my previous ayahuasca work, I knew how to integrate well. I kept on journaling, and being in Mexico, I never had a problem being alone in nature, in some of the most beautiful places on Earth. After my initial sanity check, I came to a realization.
These synchronicities weren’t happening to me, nor for me, they were happening with me. To riff off the Rumi quote, we are a drop in the universe and the universe in a drop. Each one of these synchronicities was a flirtatious wink from the universe, as if to say our dance of consciousness aligned in perfection. The universe seemed to be playing through me, and discovering the joy of itself.
The End of the Toad Road
Months and numerous startling synchronicities later, I made it to Ciudad Acuna. I crossed the border by foot into Del Rio, feeling utter exhaustion and pride after completing my cosmic marathon. I reunited with US soil by sitting on the sidewalk of an HEB grocery store with my two backpacks at 11 p.m. as I waited for the redeye Amtrak train back to Austin.
I scarfed down a sandwich and chips, and I realized how conspicuous I looked. Then, a young security guard walked up and started a conversation with me.
He noted how odd it was to see a backpacker in Del Rio, especially at that hour. He said, “You know, usually you hear about people backpacking Europe. But I’ve never heard of anyone backpacking through Mexico. That’s awesome.” I thanked him, and thought to myself. The toad did make my five months backpacking through Mexico awesome in every sense of the word.
Instilled with feelings of “reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder,” I flowed with the cosmic toad mystery for almost half a year. What did I learn? The universe’s truth and beauty sees no end. Bufo’s ability to catalyze soul flourishing by way of ineffable awe changes you forever.
Don’t press to find the toad. Bufo will find you, when it thinks you’re ready.
