It looks much like any other toad. It’s plump and green with warty brown spots and vibrant golden eyes. When threatened, though, the Sonoran Desert toad does something extraordinary: It secretes a powerful psychedelic compound from specialized skin glands.
But that potent chemical defense might now be a liability for survival because of a spike in interest in psychedelic drugs.
Trapping in Mexico has decimated several populations of the amphibians and has sent others into steep decline, according to new findings presented at Psychedelic Science, a psychedelics-themed conference held in Denver last month.
“In just over a decade, we’ve put this species at risk of extinction in the name of healing and expansion of consciousness,” said Anny Ortiz, clinical therapeutics lead at the Usona Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Madison, Wis., that focuses on psychedelic drugs for medical use. Combined with habitat loss and other anthropogenic threats like climate change, “widespread toad abuse” is creating a “triple whammy for the species,” she said.
Scientists chemically identified the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT in Sonoran Desert toad secretions in 1967. But until recently, few people bothered the amphibians or were aware of their psychedelic properties. That changed in 2014, Dr. Ortiz said, when U.S. media outlets and others began publicizing the fact that the toad’s dried secretions could be smoked to induce a brief but intense high.
Many of these accounts also perpetuated a false narrative that “toad medicine” was an ancient practice of Indigenous tribes living in the Sonoran Desert, but no evidence supports this claim, said Dr. Ortiz, who conducted research on the molecule as part of her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
But as stories about the drug spread, 5-MeO-DMT became an increasingly popular for-profit offering by self-described shamans, new-age healers and underground practitioners around the world. “Toad churches,” where people could go to smoke the compound, also began popping up around the United States, including in California, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin and other states.
In the United States, 5-MeO-DMT is mostly banned as a Schedule I controlled substance, defined as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. But some groups secured a legal carve-out under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by declaring the drug a sacrament, Dr. Ortiz said.
To supply the growing market, more and more foreigners began showing up in Mexico, asking for toads, said Dr. Ortiz, who grew up in the area. “This led to locals seeing it as an economic commodity.”
Many Mexican ranchers now amass toads, keeping them in buckets and bags to sell to foreigners to take back home. The animals suffer “appalling” injuries and stress from being kept in captivity and repeatedly milked for their secretions, Dr. Ortiz said.
The species currently has no protections in Mexico and is listed as being of “least concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Dr. Ortiz feared that the pressure on the toads was creating a serious new threat, though, so she reached out to Georgina Santos-Barrera, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, to collaborate on a conservation assessment.
Between 2020 and 2024, they conducted annual nocturnal visits to nine sites in Sonora State and one in Chihuahua. In total, they found an estimated 400 adult toads and 2,000 juveniles. At least three major populations seemed to have disappeared, and several others appeared to be in serious decline.
The toads the researchers did find were also significantly smaller than ones observed in years past. This is concerning, Dr. Ortiz said, because large toads have the greatest reproductive capacities. “The right conditions were there,” she said. “But the big specimens were just gone.”
Sonoran Desert toads, which are also known in the United States as Colorado River toads, play key roles as both predators and prey. As the population declines, “I’m sure we’ll observe big ecological problems,” Ms. Santos-Barrera said. Already, she and Dr. Ortiz have heard anecdotal evidence that crop-eating insects have surged in recent years. “The toads are not there, so these bugs are not being kept in check,” Dr. Ortiz said.
Once their findings are published, Ms. Santos and Dr. Ortiz plan to ask the International Union for Conservation of Nature to adjust the toad’s conservation status. They hope this will also lead to Mexico issuing national protection for the species.
The United States has already nominated the Sonoran Desert toad to be subject to international trade regulations under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It will be voted on in November.
But protections and trade regulations can only go so far, Dr. Ortiz said. What is really needed, she said, is to persuade psychedelic users to turn away from toads.
Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, identical to the natural version, is available, Dr. Ortiz said. The molecule can also be extracted from certain plants. Yet many practitioners insist that toad- derived secretions are preferable because they are natural, Dr. Ortiz said. Some also insist that the secretions contain other chemicals that contribute to the drug experience.
In fact, the other compounds the toads produce are cardiotoxins with no mind-altering properties, according to Dr. Ortiz. “There’s no added benefit for using secretions,” she said.
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