"Park Service Begs Visitors: Please Stop Licking These Psychedelic Toads"

"The National Park Service dropped an unusual warning recently, urging visitors to stop licking toads.

“As we say with most things you come across in a national park, whether it be a banana slug, unfamiliar mushroom, or a large toad with glowing eyes in the dead of night, please refrain from licking,” the agency wrote.

The warning posted on Facebook last week specifically applies to the Sonoran desert toad, aka the Colorado river toad.

“These toads have prominent parotoid glands that secrete a potent toxin,” the agency wrote. “It can make you sick if you handle the frog or get the poison in your mouth.”

Yet people seek it out anyway for something else it secretes: a hallucinogenic substance called 5-MeO-DMT."

Ed Mazza reports for HuffPost November 7, 2022.