Bufo Alvarius
I deepened my experience with Shamanic medicines when I smoked Bufo, the toad medicine at the end of July.
What is Bufo Alvarius?
"Bufo Alvarius" is a toad that lives in the Sonoran desert in Mexico and from which the organic 5 MEO DMT is extracted, which is a substance that is extracted through its parotid glands, this is a species that hibernates ten months underground and comes to the surface only in rainy seasons to eat and reproduce, it is important to mention that to obtain this substance the toad does not suffer or die, only the toxin is collected and the toad is released, but it is very difficult to obtain it since it comes to the surface a few times a year.
5 MEO DMT (5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine) is known by various names such as Bufo Alvarius, Medicina del Sapito, or La Molecula de Dios, but regardless of what we call it and without fear of lying, we can say that it is the entheogen most powerful in the world.
"There are no words" to be able to explain such a significant, revealing, and divine experience. Participants surrender to the experience without judging to allow the release of the greatest amount of accumulated negative energy and thus be able to literally be reborn to enjoy and live fully.
Although the participant loses all notion of time, which may seem much longer, the session usually lasts from 7 to 15 minutes, and at the end of the experience, the participant begins to integrate consciousness and reality again, finding new feelings and emotions that allow them to enjoy of deep joy, peace, and tranquility to put life into perspective as they lived it until then, finding clarity and concentration to focus his efforts on things of true value, starting with oneself.
The toad's medicine favors the healing and regeneration of the body, managing to stimulate the immune system, which allows for accelerating the healing of certain diseases, particularly those created by emotional traumas since most diseases have an emotional root. This means that if we eliminate the origin of the disease, the body will be able to self-heal itself.
For more info: http://encuentrochamanico.es/bufo-alvarius/
"Someone with little or no prior experience with meditative states or practices might simply go completely unconscious, i.e. dissociate, while those with more experience might find themselves in transcendent, out-of-body or absorptive trance states that can be only partially remembered and described afterwards. Body movements, sounds and verbal utterances that are observed by others but not remembered by the subject – also indicate dissociative disconnect, no matter how pleasurable the subjective experience." Excerpt from the book, The Toad and the Jaguar
My personal experience.
This is the most challenging thing I have ever tried to explain: interpreting my experience with Bufo Alvarius.
To articulate the unexplainable, I’m borrowing some expressions from the website the-neixan.me , which references the book The Toad and the Jaguar in its efforts to make sense of such experiences.
"My ordinary identity was shattered and dissolved; I became one with the Source."
I was extremely nervous before taking Bufo. I had encountered the opportunity to smoke it three times before, but each time, I felt too shy and intimidated to follow through. Witnessing other people's extraordinary—and sometimes unsettling—reactions to the toad medicine had left me hesitant. But this time was different. I had already paid for the session, and there was no turning back. I reminded myself that I was strong enough to face the experience. More importantly, the people around me—many of whom I had met at the Ayahuasca retreat—provided a supportive and nurturing environment. This Sunday felt like the right moment to finally take the leap. I had been mentally and emotionally preparing for weeks, and it seemed as though the elements in my environment had beautifully aligned to guide me through this transformational journey.
After the facilitator explained how to inhale the substance, it was go time. Bufo began affecting me lightly while I was still drawing the smoke from the glass pipe. As a non-smoker, the funny-tasting smoke left my throat itchy, and when I felt I couldn’t inhale any more, I tried to hold it in. However, I almost immediately exhaled and coughed up the smoke with a grimace.
Then, within seconds, I was swept away by an indescribable vibrational sensation coursing through my body. The facilitator asked if I wanted more since about a third of the substance remained in the pipe. But I was already being carried off by an overwhelming maelstrom of synesthetic sensations and simply shook my head "no" before lying down.
It felt as if I were being sucked into a vortex—black and dotted with tiny, shimmering lights that resembled a starry night sky. It all happened so fast. A heaviness enveloped my head, as though it were being pulled to the ground or burdened by the infinity of the universe itself. That’s when I realized I wasn’t just in this void—I was it.
The place I entered felt like "home," the origin we return to after death and before rebirth. Unlike others' descriptions of kaleidoscopic patterns or geometric forms, I experienced no such visuals. Instead, with my eyes closed, I found myself immersed in this luxurious emptiness. The sensations in my body were intensely vibrational, as though inspired by the musical instruments played in the background to accompany my journey. Although I didn’t hear these sounds directly, I felt their vibrations deeply.
I suspect this was the "death moment" that others had warned me about, where the ego resists and some become gripped by fear. Yet I wasn’t afraid. I surrendered fully, letting the sensations flow through me. My body responded instinctively—I began circling my arms and rolling on the floor while breathing heavily, but I had no awareness or control over these movements.
The most prominent sensation was my breathing. I heard it as thunderously loud, laboring under the crushing weight on my chest and a constriction in my throat, as though I were suffocating or drowning. However, when I later watched the video my friend had taken, the sound of my breathing was nowhere near as loud as I had perceived it.
By this point, I was so deeply immersed in my inner experience that I lost all connection to my physical self. I had no awareness of the pressure of my body against the mattress or the gentle bruising of my elbows as I unconsciously pulled my arms beneath me. The only sensations I retained were the struggle to breathe, the tightness in my lungs, and the feeling of my trachea being obstructed.
"In my experience, there was no self, no body, no time or space, but there was being. There was also consciousness: I could remember everything afterwards. Even though “I” wasn’t there, there was observation and recording going on. And there was certainly bliss, joy, ecstasy unimaginable." the-neixan.me
Edward, one of the participants whom I had asked to record my Bufo experience, explained that the medicine works by releasing negative energy stored in the body. The way this release manifests can vary widely—it might take the form of crying, laughing, screaming, moving, heavy breathing, or shaking. Essentially, whatever the body needs to do, it will do.
"For most people who enter a Bufo Alvarius session, life afterward is not the same as it was before. The substance heals the brain structure, reconnects and repairs neurons. It mobilizes the last deepest blockages in our soul and smoothens them every time we enter this state of connection. The journey is short, very deep and straight to the heart of existence. Light and dark, good and bad, construction and destruction come together in a single immense, creative energy that cannot be defined and at the same time contains everything. There is a possibility of experiencing the complete dissolution of the ego and entering from duality into singularity. Pure presence and pure love are experienced." encuentrochamanico
You can watch the video of my Bufo experience below. Unfortunately, my friend only managed to record up to the point where I returned to my body and regained consciousness—when the vortex spat me out just as swiftly and suddenly as it had drawn me in. However, part of the experience was also the moments afterward, when I looked around the tent with the eyes of a newborn, smiling wildly and feeling an overwhelming sense of beauty both within and around me.
As the facilitator had explained beforehand, "Bufo resets the nervous system. It's like restarting your life with a blank page."
In the video, you can see how the people around me supported me by holding space and helping me clear my airways, mirroring my movements as a form of energetic assistance. I believe we were all connected on an energetic level, and those who were more sensitive could sense what I was experiencing. Similarly, I have felt the emotions of other Bufo participants in my own body during their journeys. Sometimes this connection was so intense that I chose to leave the tent momentarily to regain my sense of separation.
After my breathing normalized and I regained consciousness, I still felt incredibly vulnerable. My body continued to tremble internally, vibrating with the energy of my being. I was slightly uncoordinated—there was no way I could have stood up right away. My friend tried to hand me back my phone, but I suddenly didn’t know what to do with it. Holding it felt surreal, as though my hands weren’t mine. Speaking was difficult, and in a croaky voice, I managed to ask him to put the phone down because I simply couldn’t process holding it. I needed to lie down and just be in this strange yet profoundly happy state—this vibration of depth, connectedness, and indescribable beauty. Words fall short of capturing the feeling.
I also remember feeling immense joy and gratitude for being able to sense the ground beneath me. Pressing my chest against the floor, I spread my fingers and placed my palms flat on the wooden surface, delighted to touch and connect with the Earth. It was like I was a shipwreck survivor who had finally reached solid land—grateful to have made it through, to have survived. This feeling blended with a profound sense of pride and excitement about being alive on this planet. I felt a newfound joy at the thought of exploring Earth, getting to know its places, animals, and plants, as though I had been given a fresh perspective on the wonder of life itself.
At the end of the session, I was overwhelmed by a clean, beautiful feeling running through my body. It reminded me of what happens during past life regression therapy. In such sessions, the therapist takes you back to the traumatic experience and guides you through it, helping you release and overwrite the negative emotions with positive ones. If you emerge from the process feeling peace after revisiting the trauma, it means the negative experience has been replaced with a positive imprint. This process essentially allows the neurons in your brain to reconnect in a new way, resetting the nervous system. Such changes within the body often lead to visible transformations in your external reality as well. Internal shifts naturally manifest externally. With this new "programming," you start making different choices and become attracted to new things and people that align with the transformed version of yourself.
After my ride with Bufo ended, I tried to make sense of where I had been and why I couldn't breathe properly during the experience. This sensation of struggling to breathe wasn't entirely unfamiliar to me—it had been brought to me by Ayahuasca during a session last year when I asked the medicine to take me back to my birth experience. I interpreted that suffocating sensation in my body as the umbilical cord being tightly wrapped around my neck.
My mother had told me that my baby body was stuck in the birth canal for an extended period. I likely started breathing in that state and inhaled a significant amount of amniotic fluid. According to her, I was born not breathing, and the birth experience had been traumatic for both of us. While the human brain does not consciously remember such early experiences, the body does. Our bodies keep a record of everything that has happened to them. This information is stored in our cells, encoded within us, even if it's inaccessible to our conscious minds.
Traumatic experiences, especially early ones, teach the nervous system abnormal programs as coping mechanisms—ways to defend or survive. These "solutions" can persist as disruptions in the body's natural functioning. I believe Bufo is powerful enough to address and correct these "mistakes" that the neurons learned. As it is often said, "Bufo reconnects and repairs the neurons and the brain structure".
P.S.
On my way to the retreat, I listened to the radio in the car, and the first song that played was Voyage, Voyage by Desireless. As the music filled the space, I turned emotional, overwhelmed by the sense that I wouldn’t be alone for much longer. These were my last days of renting a car on my own, and I felt an urge to fully embrace the wind of independence and freedom while it lasted. At the same time, I couldn’t shake the feeling of heading toward a new beginning—one I couldn’t yet fully understand. There was a strange, almost magnetic sense of someone moving toward me, someone intent on being with me. This sensation was purely energetic; there was no tangible evidence that anyone had a romantic interest in me. Yet, as I drove through the majestic volcano park in the heart of the island, it all felt so real, as if the universe was weaving connections behind the scenes.
If you are interested in joining this soulful, healing retreat with shamanic medicines (Ayahuasca, Bufo Alvarius, Kambo) in Tenerife, find out more at the following links or feel free to turn to me if you have any doubts or questions:
Until next time ♡
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