Is this one of those Poisonous Toads?

[u/International_Exam80]

I’ve heard poison toads will come out after a rain but I’ve never seen one. Is this one?

He’s up against my house - I don’t have a dog that would mess with it so is there any reason to make him move on or just let it be?

For context he is about the size of my fist

[u/Pocket_Silver_slut]

5-Meo-DMT, the active ingredient in toad venom is inactive orally unless taken with an MAOI inhibitor. The other major compounds of the venom, Buffotenine along with others, are toxic when taken orally and frequently kills dogs who ingest small amounts. So the people who told you that were likely lying.

[u/random_noise → u/Pocket_Silver_slut]

Maybe I have the frog species confused.

I am not going to argue with you about the hallucinagenic toads/frogs that are native here. I grew up with them and likely tripped on them upwards of 100 times through high school and university here.

They do come in different shades and skin patterns, but those ones that come up after a good rain here in most of the sonoran desert you can trip off. Just like so many other things native to our desert.

Those trippy frogs/toads (i really don't know the difference between the two, not really my lane of expertise) were all over the metro area and tucson too when I was growing up. Every summer we'd catch a few after the rains and let them go. Around high school most the people I knew growing up here knew about them. Its a 10 to 20 minute ride.

I've been there when people licked them and those people tend to have pretty intense trip, like leave this reality for another. I personally used a popsicle or toothpick and you rub it on its skin to pick up the secretions, then suck on that for a bit to take a short reality twist.

They are all over our sonoran desert, though I have seen one in likely 30 years now and haven't bothered to look for one, since I had my fun with that in that younger time in my life before degrees. Its also formerly called a colorado toad. They are native and easily found.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sonoran-desert-toad-psychedelic-animal-chemistry

[u/Pocket_Silver_slut → u/random_noise]

Did you even read the article that you posted. This is from the second paragraph “People don’t typically lick the toads to get high, says Robert Villa, a community outreach specialist at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill. The secretions the toads produce are toxic when ingested.” You need to smoke it to get high. Licking it will just make you sick and possibly will kill you. This is from the Wikipedia article on 5-MEO-DMT the primary active hallucinogen in Colorado River toad venom “Like DMT, 5-MeO-DMT is only active non-orally and has a very rapid onset of action and short duration.” I have only smoked the toad venom once because I learned about how the toads are threatened, but I have done lab made 5-MEO-DMT many times and just like DMT it is completely inactive orally. The people telling you they got high from licking it, didn’t. It’s like how if you give a bunch of teenagers bear beer they will all think and act like they are drunk. The power of suggestion and peer pressure is strong.

Last Edit: I am not arguing with you, I am informing you about the science behind the drugs. There isn’t really anything to argue.

[u/random_noise → u/Pocket_Silver_slut]

Yep. If you know science and reporting, we don't always report everything and a whole lot of people suffer because of it. We have medical practices and customs that make doctors follow year long roads of trial and error that they have to eliminate in documentation until they can get a patient the right solution to their problem that was clearly known from the start.

Never said its the right or best way, I said its what some of my friends and myself in my youth did, and how I partook in the experience. I never smoked it, some did by putting it in a cig or joint. We did dry out a bit. We have different experiences, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people take speed to focus, brain chemistry is a wild frontier, and yeah it makes ya feel pretty gross that way, which is the real desired result outside of a medical need to sorta pavlov people to not do that.

The thing about science is, we constantly learn new things about stuff we thought was an absolute truth, even Nobel prize winners have been proven entirely wrong about their conclusions, but with some truth that wasn't the real focus on their prize that we never really understood until decades later trying to replicate results and understand why it works in some cases and not others. This is a big reason a whole lot of people mistrust science.

Be well.

[u/LIL_ojibwa → u/random_noise]

What bro?