Let them eat Bufo
What happens when a powerful drug used by privileged bohemians becomes a medical treatment for the masses? Let's find out!
The story of every psychedelic is outlandish, but perhaps none more so than the story of toad medicine, Bufo, or 5-MeO-DMT. It’s still hard to believe, but in five years it hopped from an dank underground populated by rascals and reprobates to a billion-dollar treatment acquired by Eli Lilly and now on the brink of FDA approval.
The leading wild man in this extraordinary tale is Octavio Rettig, and his story is told in Kimon de Greef’s rollicking new book, The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths, and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence. In fact, Kimon tells the story of Rettig and also a little of the story of Countess Amanda Feilding, whose 5-MeO-DMT company was bought by Eli Lilly. Rettig and Feilding - two posh, drug-binging bohemians keen to bring chemical bliss to the masses, and not too concerned about the side effects.
How Octavio took the toad global
Mesoamerican tribes probably used 5-MeO-DMT for centuries, through snuffs made of Anadenanthera seeds. 5-MeO-DMT was first synthesized by Japanese scientists Toshio Hoshino and Kenta Shimodaira in 1936, and was identified in the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina (the yopo tree) by VL Stromberg in 1954. Vittorio Erspamer, the Italian scientist who discovered serotonin, identified 5-MeO-DMT in the secretion of the Sonoran Desert toad (Bufo alvarius) in the 1960s. It didn’t really play any role in the 60s psychedelic counterculture, and it was only in 1983 that an American hippy called Ken Nelson decided to try and smoke the toad secretions. He anonymously published a pamphlet - Bufo alvarius: The Psychedelic Toad of the Sonoran Desert - describing how to milk and smoke the venom, then he founded the Church of the Toad of Light. The church didn’t take off, but his method of getting high certainly did.
Through Nelson’s pamphlet, toad medicine spread in underground psychedelic circles and was pioneered by folks like Andrew Weil and Ralph Metzner. Then it was discovered by two Mexican doctors - Octavio Rettig and Gerry Sandoval.
Rettig and Sandoval were two privately-educated reprobates who met at medical college and discovered a shared love of drugs. Soon, Octavio was taking so many drugs he was homeless. But then Gerry introduced him to 5-MeO-DMT. After a long toad binge, Octavio emerged declaring he was clean (except for the toad, and the weed). Both he and Gerry became interested in the potential of 5-MeO-DMT in treating addiction.
Octavio got connected to the Seri by a Mexican psychologist called Ana Maria Ortiz. The Seri are an indigenous fishing tribe on the coast of the Sonora desert. Octavio helped some of the Seri get off meth through Bufo, and he developed a relationship with some of them and began to weave a myth of an ancient indigenous toad medicine culture spanning Mesoamerica. There’s no actual evidence for this. Nonetheless, Octavio obtained a letter from someone in the Seri tribe authenticating his work, and he somehow managed to become a semi-official United Nations provider of ‘ancestral indigenous medicine’. He started a non-profit called OTAC (the Seri word for amphibian) and wrote a book, The Toad of Dawn: 5-MeO-DMT and the Rising of Cosmic Consciousness. The Seri were incredibly useful to him, providing (or selling) him indigenous legitimacy and adding a priceless (if illusory) ancient lineage to his product. And he was useful to them, helping some of the locals through his toad ceremonies, and bringing thousands of tourists to the impoverished town of Punta Chueca (population: 600).
Ana Maria Ortiz, who co-founded the OTAC non-profit with Octavio, was also crucial in taking 5-MeO-DMT into mainstream healthcare. She got a job at an ibogaine clinic in Tijuana called Crossroads, where Martin Polanco served ibogaine to recovering addicts and traumatized veterans. Ortiz incorporated 5-MeO-DMT into the Crossroads protocol, and the ibogaine / 5-MeO-DMT protocol is now used in many ibogaine clinics. That brought 5-MeO-DMT to Special Forces veterans looking for healing and some of them, like former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, went on to sing the drug’s praises on their podcasts. Crossroads also inspired the first ever scientific studies of 5-MeO-DMT experiences, led by Professor Alan Davis of Ohio State University.
In 2013, Octavio went to Burning Man and introduced 5-MeO-DMT to the global party set. So did James Oroc, an extreme sports enthusiast who tragically died in a paragliding accident in 2020, and Florencia Bollini, an Argentine facilitator who tragically died in a ketamine-related incident in 2025. Flor, who Kimon says was a great help to him with his book, played a central role in turning on the ultra-rich to toad medicine. Her clients included people like Alki David, multimillionaire heir to the Leventis-David Coca-Cola bottling company, who says he was smoked Bufo every day for six months, and billionaire Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, also introduced to Bufo by Flor, who now lives on a private Polynesian island, dresses like a frog, has a band named the Frogs, and surrounds himself with toy frogs.
Citizen Cane (Toad)
Other ultra-rich fans of Bufo include the ‘never die’ multimillionaire Bryan Johnson, who has the molecular structure of 5-MeO-DMT tattooed on his body and live-streamed himself smoking it; and billionaire investment manager Ron Carson, who changed his name to Omani after a psychedelic experience (it means ‘running into a stiff wind’ in Native American, apparently). Omani smoked 5-MeO-DMT and then started a church. When asked what his favourite spiritual text was, he replied ‘I don’t read spiritual books. I’ve done Bufo.’
Why are the ultra-wealthy so into 5-MeO-DMT? I’ve never done it, but am told it feels like a direct encounter with the Godhead. It sweeps you into a pre- or post-egoic state, beyond the self, beyond words or images. When it works, it can be profoundly liberating from ego patterns - people have told me their first 5-MeO-DMT experience freed them from decades of mental suffering. It’s also quick - it takes you to the Godhead in just 15 minutes - and it makes you feel God-like, which appeals to the super-yacht class.
Let’s get wrecked
But it’s not always plain sailing. Sometimes the ego resists dissolution, or whites out, and it can struggle to put itself back together. Ana Maria Ortiz and others have warned of reactivations, insomnia, terrible anxiety and suicidality after bad 5-MeO-DMT trips. It’s one thing to recover from a bad trip if you have your own island and private staff, another if you’re struggling to make ends meet and need to work to support your family.
There’s also a risk that the purveyor of the God-molecule thinks they’re God. This is ‘the ego trip’ of Kimon’s title - several of his interviewees compare the God molecule to Sauron’s Ring of Power. He mentions my article on Bruno Cluzel, a Miami fraudster who set up a retreat center in Mexico, smoked toad all day long, and screamed at participants until they accepted he was the Messiah. Octavio seems to have experienced some ego-inflation as well. It must have been intoxicating to be feted as ‘the prophet of toad’ and have followers get your face tattooed on their body.
