Sapito is a venom derived from the Bufo alvarius toad. It is also known as Incilius alvarius or the Colorado River toad. The medicinal venom is released through the glands of its skin and can be harvested without harming the toad. The toad that produces Sapito venom is found in Arizona and New Mexico and in the Sonoran Desert region of Mexico. The venom produces a powerful anticancer compound known as bufalin that is also produced by other members of the Bufo genus that exist in other regions of the world.
But while all members of the Bufo genus of toads produce the anticancer medicine known as bufalin, only Sapito from the Bufo alvarius / Incilius alvarius toad produces the 5-MeO-DMT molecule in its venom. This molecule is a powerful psychoactive medicine that is used in Mexico to treat addiction, depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness. It is one of the trauma-releasing sacred medicines that has the ability to heal mental illness with long-term treatment, rather than just covering up symptoms.
Sapito for Depression: How does it work?
Sapito produces a temporary “trip” involving time distortions, sound and vision distortions, and the experience of one-ness with all things. When people first start working with the sacred medicines, all of the sacred medicines tend to focus on the release of trauma such that the traumatic or stressful experience can be processed and integrated. It is only after a person spends a longer period of time working with the sacred medicines (usually between 120 to 240 hours of time “tripping”) that trauma release is no longer the main focus of treatment.
For someone with depression, there is an overload of trauma or stress that has hijacked the autonomic nervous system. An overload of trauma might be regarded as a bottleneck of feelings that are all clamoring to be “passed through” the nervous system for processing and integration. The bottleneck prevents the “passing through” of difficult right-brain felt-sense experiences into the left-brain, logical, narrative of self. The end result is apathy or an inability to feel either good or bad feelings.
In trauma-informed psychology, the right-brain is the body. The right-brain is the unconscious mind and rather than being fully oriented in the brain, this part of the mind is actually located in the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is an extensive network of nerves that innervate the farthest reaches of our human tissues. This is the part of us that can sense another person in a dark, empty room without any other sensory information given away the presence of that person. It is the part of us that feels it when someone is staring at us from behind. The so-called “felt sense”, a term coined by Dr. Peter Levine, is used to acknowledge an experience of how a situation felt before the logical, left-hemisphere of the brain has put words to it to describe it. Trauma, according to Dr. Levine and other trauma-informed therapists, is an experience that, for one reason or another, was challenging enough that it was never described in words. A challenging situation like this that is not put into words, remains in the unconscious part of the mind, the autonomic nervous system, as an emotion. If enough challenging emotional content builds up in the autonomic nervous system and it is not released and integrated, the autonomic nervous system may become “depressed”.
Sapito is one of several medicines that can be used to cure depression by helping emotions “pass through” from the right-brain / body to the logical left-brain. The 5-MeO-DMT molecule helps us make a connection between the right-brain / body and the left-brain. But Sapito works through a number of mechanisms of action to overcome even treatment resistant depression and some of these mechanisms of action are not well understood just yet.
In reality though, while antidepressant drugs prescribed by doctors, are presented to patients as “safe” and “well-tested”, in fact, these drugs also work (or fail to work) through mechanisms of action that are not well-understood. Many antidepressant drugs, for example, target the serotonin receptors in the brain and body, but depression does not always respond to treatment with serotonin-receptor-targeting drugs. In fact, serotonin-receptor-targeting drugs often have negative side effects impacting digestion, sleep, and sexual functioning.
While antidepressant drugs don’t produce distortions in terms of space and time, the distortions produced by Sapito can be and often are instructive. So while antidepressant drugs are not well-understood in terms of their function, Sapito allows users to experience a different type of understanding about the medicine that they’re taking.
Psychiatrists who have administered Sapito to patients with treatment-resistant depression in Spain say that it is striking how patients with depression respond to Sapito. These patients are desperate and they’ve tried everything in conventional medicine. But after treatment with Sapito, within a few hours, they experience a significant qualitative change. The depression goes away.
Again though, modern psychiatry does not, as a general rule, acknowledge the work of the trauma-informed psychologists or hypnotherapists who have been working with trauma for decades. So while psychiatrists may recommend one or maybe three Sapito trips, a number of people with depression need many Sapito trips to fully overcome their depression permanently. But each trip releases trauma permanently from the autonomic nervous system such that life gets easier and each trip produces noticeable, lasting changes. What I’m suggesting here is that people with treatment-resistant depression who do not experience a full and complete remission of their symptoms with one or just a few Sapito trips should not give up. Some people require 30 or more hours of “tripping” with one or more of the sacred medicines over the course of time to overcome a major trauma that has hijacked their autonomic nervous system.
How Well Does Sapito Work for Depression?
In comparison with antidepressant drugs, Sapito has a considerable therapeutic effect in humans as a medicine that can cure depression. Scientists tend to downplay these effects by saying that “these reports are anecdotal”, but when we’re talking about mental health, anecdotal reports are the most important type of report in terms of a medication’s effectiveness.
Sapito will never be studied in a so-called “controlled clinical trial” to demonstrate that it is as effective as the anecdotal reports claim simply because Big Pharma is not interested in a naturally occurring substance like Sapito that cannot be patented. Big Pharma wants to harvest molecules from natural medicines like Sapito and then create a synthetic, patentable molecule that falls just short of a cure for disease. This model of “medicine” is extremely profitable even though technically, it is not a model of “medicine” per se.
In summary, Sapito works very well for treatment-resistant depression, but if you work with this medicine, be sure to set a course to work with it at least weekly or monthly for several years. Most people with depression have a significant amount of trauma or high-stress that has been stored in their autonomic nervous system to create a bottleneck of apathy. When you begin working with Sapito, that bottleneck is released and trauma and past stressors come to the surface and wait in line to be released and integrated such that the left, logical brain can become consciously aware of the body’s story – the felt sense of what happened to it in different, challenging situations that were never processed into verbal content in the brain.
5-MeO-DMT and Serotonin Receptors
The 5-MeO-DMT molecule interacts with the 5-HT1A serotonin receptors. This is one of 13 other receptors that can be activated by serotonin. When we talk about the serotonergic system, this is a relatively complex topic. The serotonin system regulates a number of physiological processes in the body including:
- Certain brain functions
- Mood
- Intestinal motility
- Reproductive organ function
- Body temperature
- Memory
- Learning
Because the 5-MeO-DMT molecule interacts with serotonin receptors, it’s important for people who wish to work with Sapito to detox from taking prescription antidepressants beforehand. Drugs like vilazodone, gepirone, and buspirone, for example, bind to the exact same serotonin receptors as 5-MeO-DMT though these drugs bind in a very different way and they produce very different results. All antidepressant drugs, antipsychotics, and really any psychoactive drug should be discontinued for a time before a person works with Sapito to prevent the development of serotonin syndrome.
The serotonergic system is made up of a number of receptors that can interact with serotonin, but every serotonergic molecule that interacts with these receptors can have a different impact on a person’s physiology. What’s unique about Sapito and 5-MeO-DMT is the fact that this molecule produces a 3-dimensional experience and a sense of unity that can relieve symptoms of depression naturally.
Trauma Release Using Sapito
Many of the sacred medicines including Sapito work, at least in part, by producing a heightened level of brain plasticity. Brain plasticity refers to the brains ability to remodel its neural connections in order to stop nagging or looping thoughts, obsessions, addictions, habits, and more. If you have a tendency to become depressed in response to some trigger, Sapito can help your brain reroute neural connections or produce entirely new connections to get your thoughts out of dead-end thinking.
Being exposed to trauma is a ubiquitous human experience. Birth is the first major trauma that we experience before we have words to describe our experience. As children, what is traumatic to us is quite a bit different than what we experience as traumatic as adults. But as adults, even a painful dental appointment can be traumatic if we are pressed for time and we don’t ever talk to anyone about the experience afterward to properly process it.
In the modern world, we are not active in releasing what traumatizes us. We acknowledge that stress produces illness, but we have no mechanism through which to control stress or release stress from the autonomic nervous system when it builds up. Sapito and the other sacred medicines are a way to fill this gap and allow humans in the modern world to release stress and trauma permanently. This is a medicine that has a lot of potential to make a person’s life better whether that person has depression, anxiety, or cancer.
Contact us at info@medicinassagradas.com for more information about treatment with Sapito.
Resources:
Mouzo, J. (2024). Hallucinogen from Sonoran Desert toad venom shows potential to treat mental disorders. Retrieved August 16, 2025 from
Zhang, Y. et al. (2018). Role of P53-Senescene Induction in Suppression of LNCaP Prostate Cancer Growth by Cardiotonic Compound Bufalin. Retrieved August 16, 2025 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30166403/
Xu, Y. et al. (2014). Research progress of in vitro and in vivo anti-tumor effects and formulation of bufalin. Retrieved August 16, 2025 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25423817/
Takai, N. et al. (2008). Bufalin induces growth inhibition, cell cycle arrest, and apoptosis in human endometrial and ovarian cancer cells. Retrieved August 16, 2025 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18425357/
Yin, P. H. et al. (2012). Anti-tumor activity and apoptosis-regulation mechanisms of bufalin in various cancers: new hope for cancer patients. Retrieved August 16, 2025 from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23317181/
Sandoval, G. (2014). Bufo Alvarius and the entheogenic experience. Lunaria: Tenochtitlan, Mexico.