Journalist, traveler, writer, therapist… Fernando Miguel has been organizing retreats for some years with visionary substances to facilitate therapeutic processes, including Incilius alvarius (erroneously known as Bufo alvarius). Recently, Fernando has traveled to the Sonoran Desert, in northern Mexico, to get to know this fascinating species in its natural habitat and experience firsthand the healing rites of the Comcáac nation, guardians of the toad.
You’ve just returned from Sonora (Mexico) in your search for Bufo. What did you find there?
Mexico, what a country! It has its legend. Ambrose Bierce, protagonist of ‘Old Gringo’ (Carlos Fuentes), said “an old gringo in Mexico, now that’s euthanasia”. In fact, he went there during the Revolution and never returned. Mexico is a country with very striking conditions. Between my 20s and 30s, I traveled there a lot, but it had been 19 years since I had traveled to that country, so it was a powerful trip for me. I was a journalist for many years, and then life led me to find a way out of my own labyrinth, and now I work as a psychotherapist.
What is your connection to the world of therapy and more specifically therapy with psychedelics?
I’m very interested in working with entheogens because I’ve seen the consequences it had on me and what it has for many people. I think it’s a very rich work that we need to investigate, and we need to do it with courage, because we already know that many of these substances are prohibited in our society, in the West, but with care, with respect for traditions and the substances themselves. We need to continue investigating because it’s obvious that these substances heal, that’s why they’re called “medicines”. This is where my trip to Mexico fits in.
First encounter with Bufo
What was your first encounter with the little toad like?
The first time I tried Bufo was one of the most significant moments of my life, there’s nothing more to say. When I woke up, I felt something I had never felt before. I’m a father, I’ve held my newborn son in my arms, I’m deeply in love with my wife… I mean, I’ve had very strong feelings, but what happened to me was unique, and the trip to Mexico is a bit of pulling on that thread. That’s where the substance comes from, like peyote, or the famous mushrooms from the Oaxaca area. I spent two weeks doing a bit of therapeutic work and a bit of journalistic work. There, two of my professions came together, the one I had for many years and this one, because although I’m very far from journalism, the research topic came up a lot; working with the Comcáac, then working with Mexican shamans, so this has been the objective of the trip.
What effect have you seen in other people at a therapeutic level? What therapeutic possibilities does Bufo incitius have?
I think that Bufo, unlike other substances, is such a profound journey that, in a way, it reconfigures us internally. I have a friend who had a lot of addiction problems, with a couple of sessions with that type of DMT he left the addiction. We can put words to work with ayahuasca or mushrooms, they are longer trips that last hours, many things happen to us, but there is always a part of connection. Bufo is a mystical experience, it’s putting yourself in contact with God for a few minutes and when you come back, you experience what it means not to have this thing we call ego.
I remember in Mexico with the last shaman I was working with, Judah Beltran, he let me watch him work for a few hours, and all the men who went were Mexicans from the North, from Sonora, tough guys accustomed to an austere life. They all cried when they came back from the experience, but not only them, the men who were observing this also cried.
Going back to childhood
It moves me to tell it. This is what bufo is: going back a little to childhood, and touching a moment of great vulnerability, that can happen to you with other substances, but with bufo it’s very strong and there’s no possible resistance. For me, that’s the great secret, the great mystery of this substance, in addition to fear. When you’re going to have an experience with bufo or prepare a retreat with bufo, the medicine already starts working because there’s a lot of fear.
I’d like to remember that it’s been studied that the brain massively produces 5-MeO-DMT when we’re born and when we die, and in smaller quantities when we make love, with sleep… Therefore, when you smoke Bufo you’re doing a kind of dress rehearsal for the moment of your death. So, I think what Bufo does is teach us to live in a healthy way or at least contact that, which is in our vital core as human beings and do a dress rehearsal about death from which we then return, that is, we don’t have to stay there. And that allows us to realize that the moment of death is going to be something sublime, that it ends well, as oncologist Enric Benito argues.
Do you think everyone is prepared to go through an experience of this type?
It could be for everyone, but those of us who approach the world of psychedelics and their therapeutic or ceremonial applications are a tiny percentage of society, maybe 1% of the population, perhaps now that it’s spreading it’s 1.5%. There’s a type of person who wants to delve deeper, reach our best vital version, move away a bit from materialism and reach spirituality. Every time I take bufo I realize the responsibility of the person lighting the pipe, and when I’m entering the experience, my last moment of consciousness is “this is very big”. Is it for everyone? It would be damn good for everyone. I’m sure that if you go to the United Nations or give it to Trump or Putin or Netanyahu, it would be super good for them, but obviously, they’re not going to approach it.
What is the Sonoran desert like? In what conditions do the members of the Comcáac tribe live?
Mexico has these three hot spots, in terms of entheogens: Oaxaca, known for María Sabina and the so-called “landslide mushrooms” (a type of psilocybe mushrooms that grow in Oaxaca). The second is the area of the Wirikuta desert, Real de 14, the peyote area and the Huichol Indians in the Margarita farm. Finally, there’s Sonora, which is in the north, just south of Sinaloa, a name that will sound familiar to many, a very tough place where drugs and migrants go up towards the United States.
Part of that drug is staying there. There are many people who consume cocaine, methamphetamine, and now fentanyl consumption is also rising, because Mexican cartels are producing these types of substances and bringing them up to that great market that is the United States. Hermosillo is the capital of Sonora, one of the hottest cities in the world, 42 or 43 degrees in the month of September. The Comcáac, the Seri people, are in Punta Chueca, about two and a half hours from Hermosillo. It’s a super poor town, some compare it to a kind of gypsy settlement. Like so many other places in the so-called Third World, there’s a big problem with plastic. The first thing I found was the huge amount of plastic, it’s a panorama that always saddens. That’s where the Comcáac live, a people that was obviously massacred. It’s a small community and right now they’re the ones taking care of the bufo.
The missing lineage
Unlike other traditions, there’s no known lineage linking the ancient indigenous people of Sonora with the psychoactive use of Bufo, as is the case with mushrooms and peyote. It’s a very recent custom, only about 60 years old. Who do they receive this tradition from?
Indeed, it’s said that in the ruins there are images of toads, of their parotid glands, but there’s really no demonstration that it was used ancestrally. What we do know is that the people who have popularized Bufo, first in Sonora, then in Mexico and then in the rest of the world have been Doctor Gerry, Gerardo Sandoval Isaac, and Octavio Rettig Hinojosa, a very controversial doctor. He was the one who brought bufo to the Seri community, he was the one who lit the pipe for the community elders, for Chapo and grandfather Pancho, from the Barnett family, in Punta Chueca.
The figure of Mexican shamans should always be circumscribed to the place where they were born and developed. We, as Europeans, don’t understand the Mexican idiosyncrasy. It’s a very tough country, with a custom of a lot of craziness, those who know about the enneagram, character 8 is the character of leaders, the strong character, and Mexico is said to be a character 8: they love deeply but they also know how to kill. Octavio is very controversial but we owe him that you and I are talking about this substance and all the good it’s doing.
In Punta Chueca there are people who have problems with crystal meth. I met a man from Tijuana in Punta Chueca who was hooked on heroin for 15 years. He was a lost man, and Octavio lit the pipe for him many times. Now Berna is a man totally retired from substances.
The existence of lineage, of a tradition allows the establishment of a series of safety practices with the substance after many decades or centuries of trial and error. Do you think the bufo community is still in that experimental phase?
When you share a medicine, you have two main options: one is to let the person make their journey and you’re simply there as a container and protector – in case there’s any seizure or movement that could be dangerous for the person – and then you have another option which is intervention. I think it’s important to work on your narcissism and Octavio intervenes a lot. There are rumors, which I haven’t verified, that there have been people who have died during his ceremonies.
The controversial doctor Octavio Rettig
Do they work that way at Octavio Rettig’s center in Hermosillo?
It seems to me that it’s a super beautiful and very well-cared for center and what I saw is that they work with a lot of care. Anyone who comes has to do three kambo ceremonies (also a batrachian that comes from the Amazon that does a pretty strong purge), and then you can do the experience with bufo. When I was there Octavio wasn’t there, but Omar was, who is also a doctor and like Octavio was also addicted to cocaine and base paste. When patients arrive at the center, they are given a medical history and so on, so they do everything with great care.
Later I was working with Judah Beltran, who is a shaman of many years, who was an evangelical pastor. He also intervenes a lot, he’s a guy who does somersaults… and a lot of judgment came out of me, this European judgment came out. In the end, everything is medicine and the one who does things does them for a reason.
Medicine or poison also depends on the dose, right? What is the appropriate dose for a safe experience with bufo?
Here in Europe it’s done with controlled doses, with weights, but in Punta Chueca it’s rough. I did a couple of experiences with Pancho Chupacabras and his wife, Ursula, a Slovenian who has been living in Punta Chueca for many years, and they told me that before they did it with pure paper, by eye. Now they have some metal spoons and they measure it a little more. Well, we’re talking about milligrams, so the dose can be between 40 or 90 milligrams when using the substance that comes from the toad’s glands. When using the laboratory molecule [5-MeO-DMT] you have to be much more careful because we’re talking about between 7 and 14 milligrams, so it’s much more delicate.
Is there any difference between the Bufo experience and the synthetic active principle?
I don’t notice a difference between one and the other. What is said to be proven is that the substance that comes in the little toad has cardiotoxins, that is, it’s toxic to the heart. When I spoke with Omar, the doctor working at Octavio’s center, he told me that the proportion of toxins is so small that it’s not dangerous and this man is a doctor. In Mexico they are completely against working with molecules, because on a symbolic level working with one thing or another is different. It’s like taking a capsule with psilocybin or eating some mushrooms. Besides, in the substance that comes from the toad there are other types of alkaloids that influence the trip. I’m inclined to work with the toad’s venom.
According to the shamans, the difference between the two lies in the spirit, that elusive concept. Encouraging the use of the synthetic version, as Hamilton Morris does in the ‘Pharmacopea’ chapter, tries to solve the ecological issue, the pressure that humans are putting on this reduced community of toads in the Sonoran desert.
It’s true! Let’s talk about the little toad, which is the protagonist here. Bufo is the only animal of all species in the world that has 5-MeO-DMT. There are few animals that have entheogens and this is the only one that has this molecule. The toad spends 8 months underground, a period where they completely reduce their vital activity. When it starts to rain, which is our summer (July, August and September) they come out. What they told me is that, for now, there’s no problem because there are many. Even two years ago there was a boom. But obviously we Westerners arrive and be careful. In Mexico it’s legal and in Tulum many ceremonies are being done; everything indicates that there’s going to be a lot of demand. It seems that for now there’s no problem but obviously we have to keep an eye on it because they are little animals. In other times, we Europeans plundered the resources of other places. We’re still doing it. So it wouldn’t be bad if, in this case, we approached those latitudes with due respect and humility.