Refers to the alleged practice of licking Bufo toads to ingest the psychoactive compounds they exude from glands located on their exterior. These toads include the Cane Toad, Bufo marinus and the Colorado River Toad, also called the Sonoran Desert Toad, Bufo alvarius.
Licking these toads is a bad idea.
These toads, and many others in the Bufo family, exude the toxic chemical bufotenine, (also called bufotenin) which is, as stated in the node of the same name, not psychoactive in reasonable doses. It is psychoactive in "unreasonable doses", but the effects are not pleasant, and a psychoactive dose will have very unpleasant physiological effects as well. Cane toads in particular kill a lot of dogs and other pets every year in Australia. These deaths may be a result of the animals ingesting lethal doses of bufotenine and other chemicals when attacking, harassing or eating the toads, however, recent studies show that many poisonings are a result of toads leaving residual traces of their exudations in the pets' food bowls while attempting to eat their food. Bufotenin is chemically similar to serotonin; another name for bufotenin is dimethyl-serotonin.
The Colorado River Toad, Bufo alvarius, also produces 5MeO-DMT, or 5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine. This is a fast acting, potent psychedelic drug. It is psychoactive when smoked, or injected, but not when ingested. Licking this toad would no doubt cause psychoactive effects, but apart from being disgusting, stupid and unhygienic, it would also involve ingesting a dangerous quantity of bufotenine. Tripping your brain into a knot on DMT while beginning to die from bufotenine poisoning sounds profoundly unpleasant to me. VoodooBïrd informs me that ingesting Bufo alvarius exudations would cause death by tachycardia induced exhaustion.
The toads exude their venom from visible glands located on their backs and on their limbs, just before the feet. These glands are called parotid glands, and are a feature common to all bufo toads, though as already mentioned, the range of chemicals they produce varies from toad to toad.
Less-stupid way to get high on toads
Should you wish to get high on toad juice, your best bet is to collect the venom by lightly pressing the frog against a piece of glass, drying the horrible product out and smoking it. This should only be done to bufo alvarius, and then with extreme caution.
Half a gram of venom can be harvested from one large toad, every six weeks on average. Half of this product is water, which will evaporate quickly after harvest. Up to 15% of the remaining product is 5MeO-DMT. Therefore, smoking this product should not be done unless you have scales capable of measuring milligrams, since 5MeO-DMT is psychoactive in doses as low as 3 mg. A toad should be rested for a week between harvests.
Many thanks to VoodooBïrd for corrections and for adding further information to this writeup.
Refrences: http://www.lycaeum.org/languages/finnish/acid/data/toad.html, http://www.erowid.org/animals/toads/toads.shtml, http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/mcb/165_001/papers/manuscripts/_912.html, http://members.cox.net/toadvenom/almost.htm. This data has been accrued through research, not experience. I don't recommend smoking toad venom unless (a) you are capable of extracting the 5-MEO-DMT from the other frog venom nasties, and (b) you know exactly what you are doing by taking 5-MEO-DMT. That said, my research uncovered several accounts of people smoking dried bufo alvarius venom with pleasant effects. As with all nodes about drugs, you have to make your own decision. Bufotenine and 5-MEO-DMT are illegal in many countries.
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