Sapito is another frog-venom from a very different type of frog than Kambo that lives in the deserts of northern Mexico. A trip with Sapito usually lasts only about 15 to 20 minutes, but at moderate doses, this trip is powerful and often, life-changing.
For addictions, including alcohol addiction, we don’t usually recommend the use of Sapito as the primary sacred medicine, but rather as one of the sacred medicines that can be used between longer trips like Ayahuasca or psilocybin mushrooms. However, we’ve seen many people who used Sapito as their primary anti-addiction medicine for alcoholism. It’s possible to successfully overcome alcohol addiction using Sapito as long as you have ongoing access to this medicine over the course of 1 to 2 years such that you can take it weekly or every other week, if you need it. Most people who struggle with addiction need more than just one 15 minute session with a sacred medicine to make lasting changes in their lives though. If you plan to only work with Sapito one time to overcome alcohol addiction, it can help, but it may or may not be able to take you across the finish line in terms of cravings and addiction-related behaviors.
Sapito is a mild alternative to Ayahuasca in those who aren’t quite ready to do a 4 to 8 hour trip with a different sacred medicine. It should not, however, be administered within 48 hours of Ayahuasca because Sapito contains 5-MeO-DMT that needs to be fully metabolized by the body before Ayahuasca medicinal substances are introduced. As a general rule, you shouldn’t work with Sapito for 48 hours before or after any of the other sacred medicines except Tobacco or Kambo.
Click here to do a free trial of EMDR online.
In Mexico, when Lydian and I first began working with the sacred indigenous medicines, Sapito was one of the first that we worked with. We had never heard of Sapito before this first experience with it. It was administered in a group of about 10 people and every single one of them had a profound and very dramatic trauma release experience as a result of the Sapito.
After we’d taken Sapito a number of times over the course of many months, we began administering it with the curandera to other people, many of whom were trying to overcome drug addiction. These people would come weekly to receive treatments with Sapito that helped them avoid drugs or alcohol for weeks or sometimes a month or even longer at a time. People often visited the curandera weekly for more than a year at a time to receive Sapito treatments.
Most sacred medicines don’t require a year or longer of treatment to overcome alcohol addiction, but Sapito is a “short trip” and while it can help you release a big burst of trauma, relatively speaking in relation to some of the trauma-informed therapies that are administered in psychology or psychiatry clinics, Sapito releases a fairly small burst in comparison to what psilocybin or Ayahuasca can do. Nonetheless, some people become addicted to alcohol or other substances as a result of one specific trauma that, once released using a short-trip sacred medicine like Sapito, frees that person forever from the grips of addiction.
There’s no way to know what the unconscious process is that’s driving your addiction until it becomes conscious, so when you begin working with sacred indigenous medicines like Sapito, you need to keep an open mind and acknowledge it if you need more than one Sapito experience to overcome your addiction.
As a very general rule, none of the sacred medicines should be administered in a “one-off” sort of scenario. People who are struggling with addiction almost always need more than just one treatment, but if Sapito doesn’t do what the patient desires, there are always other sacred medicines to consider for the treatment of alcohol addiction. Most people with alcohol addiction will need to put in about 120 hours of macrodosing with one or more of the sacred medicines to fully overcome the trauma that maintains their addiction. Some people opt to work beyond the 120 hours to specifically heal an alcoholic family dynamic that contributes to conflict and negative behaviors. This type of work often requires several months to one year to complete, but when the work is done, people who have struggled with addictions, relationships, angry outbursts, difficulty sleeping, depression, anxiety, and physical health problems, are often no longer in the grips of these issues anymore.
Sapito is something that we start with often in those with alcohol addiction because it’s a short trip and as such, it makes people feel a bit more like they can control their experience. Indeed, you do have control over your dosing when you take Sapito. When you’re first learning about this sacred indigenous medicine though, it’s important that someone guides the process to ensure that you take enough of a dose to have a full experience.
Click here to learn more about the DreamLight.app, a guided meditation and brain-entrainment tool for trauma treatment at home.
5-MeO-DMT
5-MeO-DMT is credited with producing many of the psychedelic effects of the Sapito frog venom. This substance is produced in some plants and fungi, but most often, it is administered as the dried Sapito venom in smoke-able form using a glass pipe.
5-MeO-DMT relieves depression and anxiety and it can be used to cure Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) too with regular doses administered over the course of a year or two. Big Pharma has been trying to develop a synthetic 5-MeO-DMT product that they can market at high cost for treatment-resistant depression because it has such a good track record treating untreatable depression symptoms.
Bufotenine
Bufotenine is a weak hallucinogenic substance found in Sapito that plays a role in the tripping experience. Usually 5-MeO-DMT is at center stage in research into the frog venom, but bufotenine is important in the Sapito experience as well. Bufotenine content quantity varies from batch-to-batch of Sapito.
Octavio Rettig and Sapito
Octavio Rettig was a physician who pioneered the use of Sapito for mental health issues and addictions and several documentaries have been made portraying him and the administration of Sapito in Mexico. He has been shrouded in controversy, but perhaps this is due to Big Pharma’s interest in producing synthetic Sapito-like venoms that they might sell at a massive profit. While Octavio Rettig has his own methods of administration and his own protocols, it’s important to give credit to him as the one who really brought this important anti-addiction medicine into the public eye.
Octavio Rettig is the figure most prominently associated with Sapito, but there are a number of people who administer this medicine in Mexico and in other countries throughout the world.
What is a Sapito trip like?
Most people who inhale the Sapito smoke initially become extremely relaxed and very calm for a few moments. Guides lay the subjects down on a mat and often, the subjects seem to be in a deep, calm sleep. However, when the subject is overloaded with trauma, the body may flail around, cry, or even scream or curse during a Sapito trip. Often, people have no recollection of these somatic experiences when they occur. This physical response to the medicine is the release of trauma in the form of strong emotions that have been stored in the body. It’s important to have someone who can protect the subject while they release this trauma during a Sapito trip.
The dramatic release of trauma on a Sapito trip has life-changing effects in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and addictions. Once trauma has been released, even treatment resistant depression lifts and life-long addictions come under the subject’s control. While many of the conventional treatments for addiction and mental health are not really that helpful, Sapito is a medicine that often has a powerful and rather prolonged effect on a patient’s cravings and symptoms of PTSD, depression, or anxiety.
Resources:
Medrano, L. (2024). From Toad Toxin to Medicine: The Promise of 5-MeO-DMT.Retrieved June 24, 2025 from https://jheor.org/post/2542-from-toad-toxin-to-medicine-the-promise-of-5-meo-dmt