Terror in NYC after toad venom love drug kills man
Health officials in New York are cautioning people to avoid a "street aphrodisiac" made from the excretions of a poisonous toad, after a man consumed the illegal concoction and died.
The city's poison control center issued the warning Friday after receiving a hospital report that a 35-year-old man who ingested the hard, brown substance died earlier this month. The product is sold under names including Piedra, Love Stone, Jamaican Stone, Black Stone and Chinese Rock at sex shops and neighborhood stores. It is banned by the Food and Drug Administration.Link to AP item, more on a NYT blog here.City health officials said the victim, whose identity was not released, was admitted to the hospital complaining of chest and abdominal pain. He died two days later. Health officials said the hardened resin, made with venom from toads of the Bufo genus, contains chemicals that can disrupt heart rhythms.
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The graphics are surpassed only by the headline.
It was a dark and stormy toad...
"toad venom love drug"....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKSy5I3zsAA
Posted in sex? You don't have a tag for drugs or perhaps a Darwin award?
aren't you supposed to smoke this stuff? Bufotenin is a very similar chemical to DMT...
When I was a kid, eating poisonous toad excretions was the sort of thing I never though you'd have to warn people not to do.
Still, the phrase "toad venom love drug" has a certain charm.
licking,smoking, refining etc. - it is strong stuff. Never could see human utility.
One vignette; spring rains on a Pacific island, gentle instead of the lash of the typhoon season. Walking home in the semi-dark and the road suddenly alive with thousands of dark, glistening backs. Relentless hordes hellbent on that one night of glorious toad sex. Popping under the wheels of traffic as they cross the one ring-road, goggle eyes catching the headlights. Later at home, spouse laughing and suggesting I show up at the good neighbours with an earnest catch of a sack of toads instead of the usual stringer of amberjack or stringbag of top shells. Crazy foreigners!
Reminds me of Beavis & Butthead sucking on frogs.
Hmmm - so it's supposed to be applied to the skin. It's a bit like flying ointment, then, although I can't say I'd recommend selling either to Joe public.
"What, you mean I wasn't supposed to swallow this aconite?"
Bufotenine the compound found in some toads is a tryptamine and very close to Psilocin found in some mushrooms , but IT IS NOT PSYCHOACTIVE>
I had to capitalize that because I am amazed that no one has ever read the experiments done with Bufotenine.
Injecting increasing amounts of Bufotenine into a volunteer subject made the subject sick and dizzy but it had no psychoactive, and no pleasurable effects whatsoever.
Where did the idea of this as an aphrodisiac come from?
I would hope that people would never take anything, even with a doctors prescription, without doing some research on it first.
I once had a doctor give me two drugs that would have killed me but I followed my rule of always reading about anything i put in my body and it saved my life. Fortunately I called my doctor and told him because he had given the exact same two drugs to another guy right before he saw me.
Most doctors can't keep complete track of the thousands of drugs and the possible interactions with other drugs.
It is sad that someone had to in this way.
If he needed a drug he should have stuck with Viagra, though it can kill you ,at least it works.
DRBLACK:
most of the experiments I've been able to find involving bufotenine were done with schizophrenic patients and prisioners.
most of what I've found out on the web about bufotenine, points towards what you say, that it is not psychoactive at all... (well, except for the flashing colors and lines)
Problem is that these frogs don't just make bufotenine. And the secretions of the bufo toads actually DO contain 5-MEO-DMT (which is a very well known psychedelic)
"Two recent publications provide new and provocative input to this dialogue. One of these involved a series of appearances of a reddish substance on the East Coast called Chinese Love Stone, Black Stone, Rock Hard or Stud 100, being sold as aphrodisiacs. They were to be moistened and rubbed on the genitals, but as might be expected, quite a few were eaten and eventually smoked. They contained steroidal toxins, and were possibly related to some frog origins, but they were claimed to be bufotenine and indeed contained bufotenine in addition to several cardiotoxins as well as 5-MeO-DMT." -From THIKAL
Terror? If there were giant poisonous hallucinogenic toads roaming the streets then that might warrant the use of 'terror' in the headline. Idiot ingests toxin and dies does not.
#10, Tricky-
not all Bufo species produce 5-methoxy-DMT; as far as I know, B. alvarius (Colorado River toad) is the only Bufo species known for sure to contain this compound in its venom (though I'd be delighted to be proved wrong).
'I once had a doctor give me two drugs that would have killed me...'
Where's the program for every MD's office computer that flags dangerous drug combinations? Or a drug company-sponsored site that does the same? Could save hundreds of lives a year.
Red Tom,
I don't think this necessarily qualifies him as an idiot. I would expect that products meant for consumtion and sold at a sex shop would be either approved by the FDA or labeled explicitly to the contrary, like, er poppers. Imagine dying from a pair of 'edible' panties. I think this is incredibly sad. I'd also like to see the packaging that the 'love stone' was sold in.
I'm also paranoid of using single quote marks after the other day's posting. help!
I have to be the guy who calls out the AP and NY Times on the lazy journalism/copy editing in this story. Venom is injected, like by a snakebite or scorpion sting. Poison relies on the receiver to ingest it or come in contact with it for it to take effect.
Unless there's some toad-specific exemption to this rule that I'm just not aware of, they're both wrong by calling it venom.
for what it's worth, frogs of the bufo genus tend to have glands which secrete poisons that include 4-OH-DMT (bufotine) and 5-MeO-DMT... both of which are of the tryptamine family and have profound psychedelic effects, though bufotine is quite toxic and its effects haven't been explored because of this, 5-MeO-DMT is (somewhat infrequently) used by psychonauts, self-proclaimed shamans, dj's' and the like.
I'd venture to guess that this being marketed as a "sexual enhancement" is no more than the tactics of sex shops marketing poppers as "room deodorizers".
Lando Griffin says you've got to "Give Up the Toad."
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fzIBPGJ0j48
#15, Freshyill:
Though I totally agree with your general point, 'venom' is usually used in the scientific literature to describe the noxious secretions of toads.
I think the distinction may be due to the fact that most organisms regarded as venomous use venom to protect themselves while still alive (rather than protecting other members of their species after their death). Toads certainly do this- their venom acts immediately on the mucous membranes of any predator that attacks them, often causing them to abandon the attack before the toad is seriously harmed.
Miss Ormerod describes vividly the experience of ingesting these defensive amphibian secretions...
I'm betting that you could invent a penis guillotine and tell guys that using it would give them a better erection and they'd pay $5000 to buy one.
And then brag later to their friends about how great it was.
I'm livin' on Chinese Rock!
This is one of those stories that, besides the awesomeness of Toad Love Poison, is media fear mongering and should be ignored. In a city of where an estimated 200,000 people are heroin addicts, health officials are worried about one guy dying from toad poisoning?
Enochrewt: On the other hand, it makes a great anecdote for the next time that someone states or even tries to imply that they're inherently more sophisticated because they're from a big city.
Guess it wasn't Lupus.
It's never Lupus.
anyone figure out the poison arrow frog diet yet? I see no need in raising them if I can't get effective venom in captivity. What do I need to feed them?:
Ants, mostly.
Wow after reading that article the I get the impression that people are selling this as a way to get high. I've never seen it marketed in that manner. I have seen it in the micrograms (interestingly enough). The truth is that while the american authorities view this as a tryptamine containing "drug" it's a legitimate use is for maintaining a man's erection... nothing more.
Not to get "high" with... even though you can get tryptamines out of MANY available products or common plants.
Stupid bozo's that are overly coddled into thinking that things are baby proof in this world try to eat this stuff????. It's a venom stupid!
Bufotoxins (Bufotenine) is well known to cause cardiac arrest when it enters the blood stream.
that is what it does... that is why the animals produce it.
dog grabs the toad... toad freaks out and squirts venom out of it's glands... dog feels weird and dies in short order.
True,.. the venom also contains 5-MEO-Tryptramine
but that has also been described as having a "elephant sit on your head" certainly not a pleasant experience for a psychoactive. What is more likely is that the heating of the Bufotenine breaks the molecule apart into another tryptamine that is more interesting and not as deadly as Bufotenine itself.
but that is for another thread....
Flip, I've taken some analogues of DMT..
No elephants.
(well, there probably were, but not sitting on my head)
It's a really bad idea to take that stuff if you have a heart problem. It messes with hERG K+ channels in the heart(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERG ). Most pharmaceuticals are routinely screened to make sure they don't interact with this ion channel because its so bad.
Also, there is software available to check for drug interactions and theoretically the pharmacist should catch the interactions if you get the interacting drugs filled at the same place.
Finally, at least they aren't killing endangered psychoactive frogs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllomedusa_bicolor