Kambó and Quantum Quackery December 6, 2021
Giant Monkey Frog venom holds no great appeal for me. Anything that might be secreted by a distressed tree frog at its moment of reckoning is not something I want inside of me, and certainly I would never pay for the privilege. Yet my American neighbor does dearly.
The treatment is called Kambó, and it involves burning the skin with hot embers and then applying poisonous secretions of highly reactive peptides. Within minutes, the experience begins—not any kind of psychotropic high but, rather, intense flu-like symptoms and severe allergic reaction, including: projectile vomiting and diarrhea, racing pulse, fever, face swelling. After an hour, relative wellness returns, but the survivor feels truly great, with a new confidence and lightness of being. He is happy to be alive to tell the tale of the time he injected Amazonian frog poison and did not die. The frog is likely telling his own survival story about the madman who once held him against a flame to extract his venom and sell it.
For about a thousand pesos, my neighbor—an adventurous young traveler from Alabama whom I have previously called Mushroom Man—joined seven others for a Kambó treatment earlier today in the wooded hills south of the city. The woman who procured and administered the frog venom was Mexican, and she spoke like a medical practitioner, describing the effects of the poison and what kind of immune response to expect.
There was no shamanistic pretense to the procedure. Mushroom Man admits to shaking with apprehension at this point, despite his own extensive experience with psychoactive molecules, but she gently reassured him. Then she proceeded to burn him on the upper arm three times with small red-glowing embers, scratching away the blistered skin, and applying the frog mucous with a little dabbing stick. Within a minute, he became ill, dreadfully ill, but only for five minutes. His face inflated like a pie plate. He remained coherent and sober throughout.
Since then, five hours ago, Mushroom Man has been slowly recovering, taking clear fluids. His face has returned to normal size and shape. He feels hungover and dehydrated, as if from a bout of food poisoning. Remarkably, he wants to do it again soon, although I wonder if frog venom is enough to purge what ultimately is ailing him.
Kambó is not the only alternative treatment in town. The California-Tulum New-Agers—the Tuluminatti, they are called—thrive in San Cristobal de las Casas, this so-called magical city of the Maya. Countless therapies, some plant-based, others purely metaphysical, are for sale. Crystals and magnets, astral travel, lucid dreaming, sound healing, quantum realignment—it is fascinating how the language of science is used to dress up the snake oil. My interaction with one self-proclaimed quantum-realigner has been less than satisfying, as she only repeats, like a mantra committed to memory, that she “works with quantum fields.” Hey, lady, don’t we all?
Meanwhile, up in the northern lowlands of Chiapas, the dirtiest of the world’s hippies are on their way. The Global Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes assembles this year in Palenque, near the temples of the ancient ones. They begin arriving next week and intend to last until January, taxing land and resources with tens of thousands of happy clueless tripping campers with lots of free time and disposable income. This may sound wonderful, idyllic, even quaintly cosmic, but the reality of Chiapas will slap these hippies in the face. The indigenous land around Palenque belong to the Chol Maya, and they do not like trespassers at all. The Rainbow Gathering may be setting itself up for a newsworthy confrontation between tribes. Future title: Patchouli versus Copál.