Warning over £500 ‘poison frogs’ detox
Amazonian therapy is on offer in Scotland
A BIZARRE and potentially dangerous ‘therapy’ involving the poisonous secretions of an Amazonian frog is being offered in Scotland.
Traditionally, South American tribes have used kambo – a toxic substance scraped off the skin of certain frogs – as a form of physical detox and spiritual cleansing.
People who take the so-called ‘jungle vaccine’ endure a bout of violent sickness followed by an altered sense of reality.
The stomach-churning ‘treatment’ is now being offered in Scotland – with a three-day retreat costing nearly £500 set to be held in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire.
The organisers claim kambo is a ‘natural, ancestral remedy’, offering ‘powerful healing’ for people suffering addiction, depression, anxiety and stress.
However, the therapy has previously been blamed for causing damaging side-effects and even death. This year, a woman in Australia who took part in a kambo ceremony died after the shock of the poison apparently caused her to suffer a heart attack.
And last night, world-renowned microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington issued a stern warning over the frog poison and said: ‘Don’t touch it with a barge pole.’
Kambo is a waxy substance scraped from the backs of giant monkey frogs. During treatment, participants have small patches of their skin blistered with hot sticks and the frog poison is then rubbed onto the burned skin.
The initial effects include vomiting, diarrhoea and increased heart rate but when this wears off, users can experience a drunken high accompanied by a trance-like state and vivid dream-like visions which last a few hours.
The treatments are offered by a new-age group in Spain called Inner Mastery International, which claims to have treated more than 70,000 people across Europe, the Americas and Asia.
It claims to be ‘the world’s largest organisation dedicated to human transformation’.
They are now advertising a threeday retreat from July 19 to 21 in East Kilbride. The £495 event is billed as ‘a transformative combination for personal development, expansion of consciousness and deep inner well-being’. Participants are invited to try kambo – ‘what the people of the Amazon call the complete jungle vaccine’.
When contacted by The Scottish Mail on Sunday, a representative said: ‘I am hosting this retreat and can confirm we do have beds available and would be very happy to welcome you with much love.’
But Professor Pennington, Emeritus Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, said: ‘One has to take any health claims with a great pinch of salt unless they’ve been through a double blind clinical trial. I would be very surprised if this stuff had been anywhere near a clinical trial.
‘Just because it’s natural, it means absolutely nothing. After all, some of the worst poisons known to man are natural poisons. I would have absolutely nothing to do with anything coming from reptiles, because frogs are notorious for having defence mechanisms that kill anything that eats them.’
Natasha Lechner died of a heart attack in March during a kambo ceremony at her home in New South Wales. The 39-year-old took part to cure her back pain but suffered a cardiac arrest.
‘Take health claims with a great pinch of salt’