The New Yorker article: "The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads"

[clouds]

Hello guys,

just wanted to share this article with you, important to read:

The Pied Piper of Psychedelic Toads

Octavio Rettig, an underground practitioner of 5-MeO-DMT, a hallucinogenic substance derived from Sonoran Desert toads, claims that he has revived a lost Mesoamerican ritual.

www.newyorker.com

The New Yorker on Toad Facilitator Octavio Rettig

 

[rOm]

Thanks, an interesting article, well written, no misinformation.. and yes, this problematic of the " ceremony tourism" and almost " star system" that actually make drama and all. Looks quite complete.

 

[null24]

I haven’t had the emotional resources to read it yet. Both he and Sandoval are emblematically problematic. Soon I’ll suck up all y breath into my belly and read it. And comment I’m sure i will.

I think it’s interesting how many of the ethical concerns many people have been trying to point out and for years and have been castigated for are suddenly the zeitgeist and writers are scrambling to fill content with pieces on problem providers, cultural exploitation, elitist wellness seekers and “medicine” sellers.

Huh. Weird. Or maybe a new market for selling opened up.

 

[Voidmatrix]

I haven’t had the emotional resources to read it yet. Both he and Sandoval are emblematically problematic. Soon I’ll suck up all y breath into my belly and read it. And comment I’m sure i will.

I think it’s interesting how many of the ethical concerns many people have been trying to point out and for years and have been castigated for are suddenly the zeitgeist and writers are scrambling to fill content with pieces on problem providers, cultural exploitation, elitist wellness seekers and “medicine” sellers.

Huh. Weird. Or maybe a new market for selling opened up.

I tend to lean the same way...

Through this work, he came to believe that smoking toad, as the practice is called, was an ancient Mesoamerican ritual—a “unique toadal language,” shared by Mayans and Aztecs—that had been stamped out during the colonial era. He announced that he’d restored a lost tradition, and that he had a duty to share it with others. “Sooner or later, everyone in the world will have this experience,” he told an interviewer after the talk.

I tried to keep going after the above quote, but started checking out after this statement.

While I may not find this useful, subjectively, I'm sure some will learn something from it, so thank you clouds for sharing.

One love

 

[Wolfnippletip]

I read it. Should have been titled "Powerful Psychedelics and 'Charismatic' Personalities. What Could Go Wrong?" You would think even a loose cannon like Rettig would have put some restrictions on his own activities, if only out of a sense of self preservation. Amazing he's been at it this long without some serious blowback.

 

[Bill Cipher]

I can't even tell you how much I detest this guy. All psychedelic profiteers, really - but imagine being so completely out of touch that you kill a handful of people in the course of your profiteering, and then don't even pause for self-reflection.

It's a sad state of reality for sure, but the world of psychedelics is chock full of snake oil charlatans.

 

[null24]

In Rettig’s mind those people aren’t doing it right most likely and he never thought twice about it or even began to take responsibility. He’s a disgusting individual who just got a nice advertisement in the New Yorker. Regardless of how this piece portrays him, there will be scads of idiots looking him up. And he’s loving it. All those tax free illicit dollars headed his way, what a healer.

This stuff is reaching heights of vulgarity i did not think possible.

 

[Voidmatrix]

In Rettig’s mind those people aren’t doing it right most likely and he never thought twice about it or even began to take responsibility. He’s a disgusting individual who just got a nice advertisement in the New Yorker. Regardless of how this piece portrays him, there will be scads of idiots looking him up. And he’s loving it. All those tax free illicit dollars headed his way, what a healer.

This stuff is reaching heights of vulgarity i did not think possible.

You know, don't get me wrong, I do guide-work as a service, but this cat makes a lot of us look bad... With individuals like him being this wreckless, many others with the best of intentions will have to pay the price as well.

One love

 

[downwardsfromzero]

I read it and, while the first paragraphs were indeed off-putting due to their unsceptical reporting of Rettig's activities, I persisted and later in the article there was a fairly balanced level of criticism both in terms of reporting Rettig's reckless approach and from a number of people who had had contact with him one way or another, including to some extent a critique of the way he had achieved an endorsement from the Seri people of Baja California. There was a lot of distasteful reading but regarding the article solely on its journalistic merits it comes across as informative and well-balanced - at least once you get past the highly advertorial-sounding preamble (but remember, this is how journalistic material gets sold and it was always thus.)

I'd say it's worth persisting with if you're not already aware of some of the details of Rettig's misconduct. If you are already aware, it will perhaps be more difficult to be reminded of this stuff - yet I found it reasonably thought-provoking overall, and don't see it as necessary to be triggered into a knee-jerk condemnation of an article simply because it starts off reporting in anything other than the very worst of terms about someone who is clearly and with good reason out of favour with a large section of the psychedelic movement. In my view, the narrative flow of the article does a more effective job of this than one starting with an outright condemnatory tone would have done. But they were pretty soft on him overall and I think this could have something to do with the way celebrity cult-ure appears to be deeply ingrained in US culture.

(Best stop now before this turns into any more of a freeform ramble!)