THE EGO TRIP

A sharp-eyed investigation of one of the lesser-known corners of the psychotropic-drug demimonde.

“One does not lick toads. Doing so can lead to a powerful death.” Ah, but one does, as South African journalist de Greef shows in this journey into the world of ranid pharmacology. If one is a fan of organic means of getting high, then one can hardly do better than consume the “powerful psychoactive compound called 5-MeO-DMT, also known as the God molecule.” Michael Pollan has and so has the Navy SEAL who offed Osama bin Laden. But no one has explored the drug, secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad (Incilius alvarius), more thoroughly than a Mexican drug evangelist named Octavio Rettig Hinojosa, a “psychedelic superstar” who, it would seem, never met a mind-altering substance he didn’t like. Building a practice of guided psychotropic journeys that slowly morphed into a Carlos Castaneda–like cult (one difference being that he appropriated Seri and not Yaqui culture), Octavio cultivated what de Greef brightly calls “a kind of spiritual meritocracy” in which adepts attained enlightenment while lesser souls failed to do so because of their own flaws. Worse, some of them died or suffered mental breakdowns while smoking toad, which Octavio dismissed by saying, “They project on me their own darkness.” Risks and all, neuroscientists are exploring the uses of the “God molecule” in medical practice, while freelance fans of getting high are sacking the Sonoran Desert’s store of toads, an ecological devastation that now seems irreversible. Writes de Greef, whose book is deeply researched on the ground, with Indigenous people and ethnographers and biologists alike in attendance, “Compared with the volumes and profits of mainstream drug trafficking, the psychedelic toad economy is minuscule. But for the toads it is another story.”

De Greef’s book is quite a trip—and one well worth taking.