In March I did a medicine journey with Bufo, a glandular secretion from the Sonoran Desert Toad, that is rich in a psychoactive alkaloid, 5-meo-DMT, also called “the God molecule”.

Bufo is not a typical psychedelic. When you take what is called a threshold dose of Bufo, within 30 seconds to 2 minutes of inhaling, your Default Mode Network (DMN) turns off— the part of the brain that creates the simulation of reality that we all live in. That means your mind, sense of self, concept of reality, and awareness of having a body all completely disappear. You cross the threshold from duality into non-dual space.

People describe it as a death, practice for dying, and an experience of complete and utter surrender.

And based on my experience, it was all of those things.

The amount of time you’re in the non-dual (often called the unmanifest, unified field, the void, God zone, or oneness) is only a few minutes before the mind, ego, and body awareness starts to come back, but in that space there is no time so the experience does not feel brief.

Then there’s another 20-30 min where you’re in the liminal space as your default mode network (DMN) reboots.

Whereas in most psychedelic experiences you might see images or get messages or insights in your altered state, Bufo is more about the impact of touching the void.

What it is like to let go completely, to die, and come back.

Most of my fears in life can be boiled down to two core things:

1. Fear of being overwhelmed by intensity (I’m scared of plane crashes, not because of dying so much as how much time I imagine having to feel panicked on the way down— sensory overload),
2. Losing myself (my mind, my capabilities, my sense of self, identity, losing myself in relationship, etc).

And we could probably put even those two fears under some umbrella of engulfment/dissolution/death.

Bufo was a direct experience of my greatest fear.

Total engulfment of sensation to the point that it felt like I dissolved into overwhelming space.

I don’t know how else to describe it other than feeling like I started to expand and then it just kept going until there was no me remaining and the vastness became all that existed.

I can feel the welling up inside my chest as I remember it.

So big, so beyond what the mind can comprehend.

I imagine it’s what it feels like to BE the ever-expanding universe.

Absolutely insane to touch that and then come back into a body, honestly.

But there, in the unmanifest, it’s just vastness for eternity. There is nothing to fear, because there is nothing that is “other”. There is no experiencer. There is no witness. It’s total serenity.

The only reason I can even write about it is through the tendrils of awareness I maintained at the verrrry edges of going all the way in to non-duality and out.

It’s not like being asleep, either. Especially not for those of us who have a lot of conscious awareness online while we sleep.

When my mind started to come back, I only had a sense of floating in some kind of liquid— the ocean, the womb.

And then when I became aware of sounds, of being something instead of everything, I was terrified.

It was so disorienting— there was this feeling that something was very wrong, that I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. That I was too far away to ever get back. The mind without an ego structure or body is a very scary place to exist. There is nothing to anchor to, no sense of up or down, no sense of time, no reality to be a part of.

As soon as the faintest hint of having a body returned, which for me happened before I knew who I was, or where, or when I was, I felt this wave of immense gratitude and relief.

Have you ever gotten really lost, like scary lost in the woods, and then you find the trail again or another human and you’re just fucking ecstatic? It felt like that x 100.

Simultaneously, I felt a wave of grief upon realizing I was again separate from… something, anything. I had this strange sense of not being prepared to ever come back into form again; of thinking I was done with this human-consciousness-in-a-body-thing forever.

And then I just marinated in a very lucid but merged space for a while thinking about how the mind literally cannot comprehend non-duality and yet I had just experienced it and so what part of me was it that experienced it? Sitting with all the big philosophical and spiritual questions the mystics have been asking since the beginning of time— what is consciousness, who am I, what am I, what is reality?

Here are my main takeaways:

1. There is nothing painful or scary or unpleasant about ceasing to exist; it’s like all the notes in the universe merge into a single continuous sound that never ends. I don’t know if there is an afterlife, but if we merge back into the unified field, it’s certainly not a bad place to rest.
2. I have a DISTINCT preference for this over that (I am sure that is partly my ego praying I never dissolve it fully again, but I sense on a soul-level I also understand that I am here for a purpose**). My preference is for duality, for being in a body, for this incredibly novel and variety-filled experience. Heaven is here. This is where consciousness comes to play. The Vedic texts talk about the Gods being envious of the humans, and I have never understood that more viscerally. All the magic is here in the relative world.
   • **What felt most clear in the newly reborn state of mind is that I incarnated this time to be a bright light of vitality and joy and trust in the divine. A little beacon that says to others, “we don’t have to suffer so much, we get to love being alive, even when it’s hard.” Cheesy, but true.
3. Unattached to my body… I am not. Taking great care of this vessel that allows me to have a sensory experience (whether pain or pleasure) for as long as I have it on loan feels incredibly significant because I’m aware of what a gift it is to have a body at all. I’ve got a long way to go to enlightenment if we define it as non-attachment to the body.
4. And, a bit paradoxically, I am sure we are taking all of this too seriously. I believe we’re in an infinity loop of consciousness coming into form and going back into void and back into form. If you were lucky enough to come into form in a good place with a lot of opportunities, you better not spend your time doing anything you hate for very long. What a waste of that privilege. Take risks, spend your time on enjoyment. Achievement is only significant if there’s enjoyment along the way. The great spiritual masters were giggly and light-hearted because they got the cosmic joke.
5. This isn’t so much a wisdom nugget as an embodied experience I have access to now. Ever since the 5-meo obliteration, I can close my eyes and touch this place of surrender where my entire body feels like its melts into nothingness, the edges of my mind soften into faint background noise, and time stops. It’s as if there is now a pathway between this reality and the non-dual state, and while I can’t fully take my mind offline, I can get closer than I’ve ever been. It feels like a surrendering into ultimate receptivity, a mini-death almost, but blissful, and restful, like those mindless moments after an epic orgasm where you lose all sense of separateness. It’s always right here, touchable now in a new way. I feel curious if my transcendence-based meditation practice or other spiritual practices are part of what primed me to keep this door cracked open after Bufo, but whatever it is, I am grateful.

Feel free to reach out if you feel intrigued to have an experience with Bufo and I will happily connect you with resources. From what I hear, some people have purely blissful experiences, others have big cathartic releases, and everything in between. I was told I laid perfectly still and peaceful when I crossed over, which was how it felt.

Will I do it again? Probably…

But up next for me is a darkness retreat next winter. Bufo was plenty for one year.

Forever exploring,

C