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Kambo: Frog Poison As Physical / Psychological Purgative

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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One of the most recent trends in alternative / fringe wellness circles is the use of extremely toxic frog poison to induce malaise and projectile emissions alleged to purge the body of toxins. The grueling experience is also credited as a psychological purgative that leaves one feeling much more positive afterward.
Can You Poison Your Way to Good Health?

West Coast wellness elites think kambo, an Amazonian frog poison drug, is helping them purge “toxins” from their lives. ...

Kambo, long used by some Indigenous tribes in South America as a sort of rainforest vaccine, is not a recreational drug. You don’t trip, in the tangerine-trees-and-marmalade-skies sense.
Instead, you vomit. ...

In taking kambo, the goal is to purge not only so-called “toxins” trapped in your body but also, devotees say, psychological trauma and bad juju in general. ...

The idea is to make yourself feel horrible so that you may, after, feel wonderful. Its proponents describe it as, essentially, a thermonuclear-scale raw celery cleanse for the body and the soul. ...

And users should be forewarned: transcendence comes with a price.

“It was the worst experience of my life,” Ms. Allison said. “And I can’t wait to do it again.” ...

Technically speaking, kambo is a glue-like toxic secretion released on the skin of a giant monkey frog, known by herpetologists as Phyllomedusa bicolor, when the amphibian feels threatened.

The Kachinaua, Kurina and Kanamari have used kambo to treat various illnesses, build stamina and ward off bad luck. ...

Health experts advised extreme caution, and said more rigorous studies were needed.

“Many medicines have come from natural products, particularly from places like the Amazon,” said Adam Perlman, the director of integrative medicine and health at Mayo Clinic Florida. “But at the moment, I don’t think the research into the pharmacology, not to mention the safety as well as the potential efficacy, is anywhere near where it needs to be before one would advocate using kambo in people.”

Even Dr. Rabin, a champion of psychedelic therapies including MDMA and ketamine, urges caution. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/style/self-care/kambo-tree-frog-detox.html
 
Same here - I was sure I'd read about it some years ago. However, I couldn't locate any prior substantive mention of it here on the forum. Apparently it's persisted and proliferated.
 
It's not uncommon for the purgative effects of a psychedelic drug to be seen as part of the package of a shamanic 'trip'. Purgative effects being physical (vomiting and diarrhea) and mental (traumatic hallucinations). Part of the narrative is that you have to take the world apart in order to put it back together, or as Leonard Cohen put it: 'you go to heaven once you've been to hell'.
 
I dont think taking the advice of such folk is good medical practice.

What is the Hippocratic oath? `Do no harm?`
 
I dont think taking the advice of such folk is good medical practice.

What is the Hippocratic oath? `Do no harm?`


Yes, and even when the treatment is "harmful" - sticking a knife into someone leads to removal of infected appendix for example - there is a clearer and demonstrable sequence, with data on results and options.
 
This could go in…Darwin Awards.

She was “morbidly obese”, so - instead of losing weight - she took a substance which causes blood pressure to rocket; he took a drug which causes profuse vomiting, then a second drug which also causes vomiting, resulting in such violent puking that his oesophagus ruptured.

l don’t think that their names would have been crossing the desks of the Nobel Prize Committee.

maximus otter
 
My impression is that both had serious health issues and were at the end of their tether from lack of cure.
Both probably quite depressed, almost certainly desperate.
 
My impression is that both had serious health issues and were at the end of their tether from lack of cure.
Both probably quite depressed, almost certainly desperate.
Which is why those folk who advocate taking such things as a 'miracle cure' really ought to be held to account.
 
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