Input please: Toads, animal abuse, conservation and stewarding resources

[null24]

5 meo DMT is at the zeitgeist of novel wellness techniques. It is promoted by celebrities and facilitators, many of whom are questionable in their motives at best.

Harvesting toxin from Bufo Alvarius toads is a easy way to source the material needed to provide ceremonies. It is cheaper than synthetic (free) but at the cost of the toads themselves. They are not currently endangered and considered a stable population but that designation may not last if they continue to be poached for wellness providers.

One of the reasons for sticking with toads rather than synth is an alleged entourage effect. It seems like nothing more than a marketing gimmick to me. Another reason, which is easily refuted is the idea that something that comes from nature is more beneficial than something that’s made in the laboratory.

I’m constructing an essay on this topic for an online publication and would like to hear your thoughts. Have any of you used both synthetic and toad secretions? What do you think of the entourage effect? What do you think of sourcing natural substances as opposed to Synthetics?

 

[Voidmatrix]

This is an issue that bothers me as well.

If people were hunting and traumatizing these toads for a purely survival related reason, then okay. But that's not the case. People are engaging with this for a variety of reasons aside from survival, such as personal fulfillment, so find most going down this road to be selfish.

As for the entourage effect, those that try to use this excuse usually can't specify what other molecular component outside of the effects of 5meo that they are expecting an entourage effect from.

If one considers a bird's nest part of nature (something constructed from things provided by the earth), then so is any man made item, from the automobile to synthetic 5meo (constructed and synthesized from things provided by the earth). We're part of nature also, despite how we try to hold ourselves separate. We're not that special...

One love

 

[skoobysnax]

I wish this thread had more engagement. 5MEO is on my bucket list but after seeing Hamilton's follow up on conservation i have no desire to go any other route but synthetic. I have experience with synthetic DMT and I have had as powerful an experience as any other extracted source. So many factors of the mind itself color every experience as we all know. The same spice that was beautiful one day leads us into terror the next and it is for me always something about my own state of consciousness going in that really makes the difference.

 

[fink]

Unfortunate for the toad. There are deeper problems, such as fashionable 'wellness' culture itself. As soon as people start to take other people's money in these endeavours not only does the frog suffer, but the customers suffer as they become a commodity rather than a valued spiritual being. The spirit of the experience suffers and potentially the karma of the orcastrator suffers.

On the same scale as a wild man hunting a wild bird and eating it compared to a mass producing chicken farm killing excessive lifeforms for profits.

People should be free to find a frog and smoke it's gunk all they want. Commercialised harvest and whole sale of the experience is damaging in all directions.

 

[roninsina]

I have long cultivated some justifications for keeping captive toads for this purpose. I was convinced that I could provide a utopian toad habitat and humanely harvest their self defense secretions. There was even a thread here on the forums where someone claimed to be able to harvest venom by petting and kissing the toads. This, under closer scrutiny makes me think the toad just thought it was about to get eaten. I can’t imagine wanting to go that deep, when the origin of the experience was dependent upon doling out fear and stress.

I’m in the same camp as skoobysnax. It remains a bucket list item for me, but only if it’s synthetic.

 

[null24]

@ fink. The commodification of the consumers is an angle i have not considered fully. Thank you for pointing that out.

In capitalist medicine provision, the patient always suffers- from a myriad of sources. This is no different once monetary value begins to be assigned to the experience itself.

 

[Grey Fox]

I live in the native habitat of these toads. They used to be common in my area. I used to see them in my backyard.

But the last few years I haven't seen any. I suspect that my "hippy" neighbors who lived next door for a couple of years captured all the toads in our neighborhood. But I'll never know for sure.

For awhile I participated in a local Psychedelic Society group. It was run by a woman whose husband leads toad retreats in Mexico. I was quickly turned off from the group after realizing that it's entire purpose was to talk about and promote her husband's retreats. In one meeting someone asked a question about the sustainability of harvesting the toads. The woman who ran the group said that the toads were too abundant in Mexico for it to ever be a problem. She used the exact phrase, "They're like a plague down there." That was the last meeting that I attended.

As far as I'm concerned these toads are screwed. People will think and say anything to justify what they want to do. They will keep harvesting all the toads that they can find until they are gone.

 

[Ramma]

That was the last meeting that I attended.

Probably a recurring matter of affairs for you. 75% of the pupulation are mindless like the ones you described. And that's why our world is the way it is.

 

[benzyme]

I happened to synth it even before I saw the hamilton’s pharmacopoeia episode on the subject. That episode really resonated with me, so much that I bought the pamphlet he promoted, which advocates preservation, and the proceeds are dedicated towards that. The relatively simple procedure is at the back of the pamphlet.

I am in the same school of thought, that there is no distinguishable difference between synthetic and natural. The compound is the same, and if instrumentation can’t tell the difference, neither will you.
People get so caught up in superstition, that they allow it to guide their experiences, in life in general.

 

[roninsina]

benz FTW! I’ll have to make that donation for the pamphlet :thumb_up: