My Kambo Cleanse Experience

Through the agonizing stomach churns and mental paralysis, I couldn’t help but think that this was only the beginning. The poison was fully induced there was absolutely nothing I could do but accept what the next 20-40 minutes held.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Kambo Cleanse, allow me to shed a little light. According to the “Essential Guide to Kambo,”

Kambo is a venomous secretion found on bright green tree frogs native to the Amazon rainforests of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Guianas. This secretion is safely and harmlessly extracted from the backs and legs of the frogs and used more a range of medicinal purposes, a practice dating back hundreds, if not thousands of years. The application of Kambo is conducted in what are called “Kambo Ceremonies” in which the secretion is applied directly to newly formed burns in the skin, in order to be induced directly into the lymphatic system for immediate effects. Kambo is apparently known to have a range of traditional and potential therapeutic applications, both medical and spiritual. The secretion is known for its powerful emetic and purgative effects. Despite the discomfort of the initial induction, Kambo is known to revitalize and cleanse the mind, body, and spirit.

To sum this up:

You apply salivated frog poison to newly formed burns on your skin to trigger several physical responses of your nervous system, therefore inducing an intense purge thought to cleanse your mind, body, and spirit. Got it.

Right about now you’re probably wondering why anybody would willingly sign up for this and also what the experience is actually like. Well, thankfully I am here to give you all the juicy details, having completed the cleanse in February 2019. Then again, you could always find your local Kambo Brother/Sister and try it for yourself ;-).

Pre-Ceremony

I first learned of the Kambo Cleanse when a friend in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia jokingly told me about it. I laughed and said something along the lines of “What idiot would pay to be poisoned by a frog?!” Surprise! Who knew I’d be that idiot only weeks later?

I started to think more about it first in a joking manner and then it turned kind of serious, “That would undoubtedly be the experience of a lifetime,” I thought. It certainly was, for better or worse.

I arrived in Ubud shortly after and a friend of mine and I began looking up how we could potentially participate in a Kambo Cleanse Ceremony. It wasn’t difficult to find a practitioner who could administer the ceremony. Believe it or not, there is an organization, the International Association of Kambo Practitioners that maintains a list of all individuals by location who are certified and trained to administer Kambo – many of which are required to be certified by law in their respective countries.

Unfortunately, neither of the individuals in Ubud we had contacted had availability in the short time frame we were expecting. At that moment it seemed our crazy little dream of taking part in a Kambo Ceremony would die there. It just so happens however that I would be returning to Bali in a few weeks through a connecting flight to New Zealand. This gave me three free days to do as I please; And how perfectly it worked out that one of the practitioners happened to have availability for a ceremony during that time.

I reached out and was sent additional details; giving me my first glimpse into the life of Kambo. Two documents were sent to me. The first was a medical questionnaire to ensure that I was in the appropriate physical and mental state to receive Kambo. The second was additional details and expectations of the ceremony; some of which were quite interesting.

First, I was given the option of a private ceremony or public ceremony (up to 4 people). The private ceremony would cost 1.6 million Rupiah and the public ceremony 1.2 million Rupiah, $113 USD and $85 USD, respectively. I, of course, opted for the public ceremony because A) I’m cheap and B) who wouldn’t love to make friends over being poisoned and puking our brains out together. Sounds fun!

A few other points were noted:

· Bring 3 liters of room temperature water with you to the ceremony (cold water is apparently painful to purge)

· Fast 9 hours ahead of the ceremony

· Eat clean the night before

· Bring a change of clothes (ughhhh K.)

· And the most interesting…”water fasting, colonics, and enemas are strongly discouraged in the week before and after Kambo. Please advise if you have been cleansing in this way.” (I still don’t fully get that one but alrighty then…I am good!)

A few days before the ceremony, my practitioner (let us refer to her as KQ, Kambo Queen) set up a call with me to discuss my questionnaire and set expectations. No major revelations came out of that call aside from the fact that she seems so chill about the whole situation. I was sitting there like this lady is about to burn me, poison me, and watch me agonize for 20-40 minutes and this is just a casual day’s work for her. She sent the location and the next thing to do was simply show up.

The morning of, I made my way over to the pinned location. I got mildly concerned as I started to take dirt roads that only a motorcycle could pass on. The roads seemed to go into an empty field. My first thought was, aww hell nah I am not about to poison and purge myself in 90-degree heat out in a field. As I continued to fish through the paths, I came across a few homes, barricaded off by large walls. It honestly reminded me of what the photos of Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan looked like. Very comforting I know. I pulled through the barrier door to the far rear home, and there KQ was waiting to greet me with a hug.

The Ceremony

KQ was exactly what I expected. White Australian female in maybe her mid-thirties. Very in tune with mother earth, father sun, and apparently poisoning people. But she was chill, which kept me pretty calm about the situation ahead. She guided me around back to the rear covered porch where clearly the ceremony stage had been set. Laid out were three towels, three pillows, three buckets (ruh-roh), three rolls of toilet paper, a slew of musical instruments, and a bunch of other gadgets and gizmos that I was certainly not ready to ask about. One thing was clear, there would be three of us. That is when I met the two other Kambo patrons that would be joining me.

Both were young females who knew each other. The first was confident and had done Kambo just two weeks before! She also looked exactly like Ariana Grande, so I will just refer to her as Ariana. The other girl was new to Kambo and let’s just say she wasn’t feeling too confident. She was timid, nervous, and pretty quiet overall. Just for the hell of it, let’s call her Cheryl.

We took our places on the towel and the ceremony promptly began. KQ started by welcoming us and going over expectations of what would occur. Two things from that welcoming statement REALLY stood out to me, then and especially now after the fact.

First, she mentioned something about starting off with some sort of eye drop things – which was new to me and I didn’t really understand. But I certainly welcomed it as it sounded refreshing!

The second thing was considerably more concerning and really gave me an understanding of what the hell I just got myself into. She discussed how the “purge” might not just include vomiting and could also come from the other end, given that the chemicals in the poison cause contractions of your smooth muscles which apparently are in your intestines and stomach. The issue here is that there was three of us and one bathroom. The obvious questions of what happens if someone is in the bathroom when another needs to go, arose. I shit you not (no pun intended), this is the paraphrased response we got…

“I believe that the Kambo guides are guiding this ceremony and won’t allow that to happen. I’ve been doing these for a long time, and nobody has ever overlapped. They are watching over us. If worse comes to worst, we can use the garden and give ourselves back to Mother Earth.”

At this point, I was pretty freaked out and trying to hold back laughter. But hey, the show had to go on.

Next KQ pulled out a torch and asked if she could smudge us. Ariana immediately answered yes to my surprise. My eyes opened wide with the look of “what the hell are you doing with that torch and what is a smudging!?” Turns out she just used it to light some incense stuff and feathered smoke onto us to cleanse ourselves of bad spirits. Okay, Nick, breath….

Then came the eye drops. Ohhhhhh the eye drops. The refreshing eye drops that I was so looking forward to! I couldn’t wait because my eyes actually were a little dry from riding the motorcycle over.

My friends, let me assure you…these were no moisturizing eye drops. I forgot exactly what the eye drops were, but I believe they came from tree bark and were used to ground our body to its senses in preparation for the cleanse. She mentioned that they might sting a little bit….

Ladies and gentlemen…I swear KQ just dropped acid straight into my eyes. I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t move them, not a thing. For at least 3 minutes I sat there blinded by the searing pain, which was subsequently followed by my eyes being covered with cloth as they recovered. I can assure you that the drops did the trick. I was more in tune with my body and what is was telling me then I had been in a while. It was actually an interesting feeling of clarity as the pain subsided.

The next 30 minutes or so was actually relatively enjoyable. Essentially, we laid there in a meditative state, as KQ performed sound healing through the various musical instruments she had lined up. Mostly flutes, bongos, and some other funky stuff. I am not sure if this is part of every Kambo experience, but it was extremely relaxing and allowed my nerves to settle leading into the cleanse that was about to occur.

As we were pulled from our meditative state of sound healing, it was now time to begin the cleanse. She kept asking if we were ready, which gave me pause as if she really wanted us to mentally be prepared for what was to come. Because there were three of us, the medicine as she now called it (aka Kambo, aka poison, aka whatever) had to be applied one after another. However, that could not be done before creating the burns in the skin in which the medicine would be applied. The point of this is so that it would be applied directly to the lymphatic system and not into our bloodstream. I don’t know the science behind it but felt like it made some type of sense.

One by one she pulled out what looked like a small incense stick, heated it up, and gave us three little sticks in a linear pattern. Ariana was first and because she had done it before, she was able to have the points on her body where she wanted; she chose her right ankle, right where her first Kambo point occurred. Once her burns were created, she was directed to begin chugging 1.5 mL of water in preparation for the medicine to be administered. Cheryl was next and it was mandatory that her points be on her right ankle, given that she was a female and it was her first time (it’s the Kambo Gods law folks, don’t ask me how it works). Last and maybe least was me. Given that it was my first time and I am a male, the points were placed on the top of my left arm. Obviously, the burns stung a little bit, but it was no more than a second or two each. Those didn’t faze me nearly as much as the acid eye drops. Frankly, I was just more upset that she didn’t do them in a perfect vertical line down my arm. Like come on KQ, these babies are going to be with me forever!

Now that the three of us had open holes into our lymphatic system – it was time to administer the medicine. It came on a dry stick to which she scraped off into little balls the size of a pellet out of a bb gun. Those are what would be administered upon the burns, in which our lymphatic fluids would suck in the poison triggering a reaction with minutes if not seconds. For safety reasons, she would start by only administering one point at a time, just in case there was some adverse reaction, it could easily be reversed.

The time had come.

Again, Ariana was first. As her points were administered, within minutes you could tell that she was in agonizing pain. She actually was throwing up into her bucket before the 2nd and 3rd points were even applied! I just had to sit there quietly and watch as this poor girl was clenching in pain and continuously throwing up and rolling around. Not so confident now, are we Ms. Ariana!? I make a lot of jokes about the cleanse and how I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but this point was the first time I actually paused and said…wait a minute…this could actually be bad.

After about 10 minutes KQ moved onto Cheryl. You thought Ariana went down for the count quick? Cheryl legitimately fainted and fell backward onto the floor from a sitting position after the first point was administered. She awoke minutes later only to begin vomiting. This was my second dose of reality, that what was about to occur was really going to suck.

Here we were. It was my time. Before I go any further, I should tell you my expectations going into this. I don’t consider myself to have a considerably high pain tolerance. As a matter of fact, when it comes to pain, I think I am kind of a pussy. But I do have a pretty high tolerance for sickness, vomiting, etc. I once had my appendix rupture and I experienced the worst pain of my life for over 24 hours straight. I vividly remember that feeling and knew nothing I could experience could come close to that. I felt pretty good about this. I knew I would be nauseous, I knew it would be discomforting, but I was about as ready as you could be for what was about to occur….or so I thought.

The first point was applied. I sat there counting the seconds…nothing was happening. After 30 seconds I began to question whether or not I had received a low dose or if something was off. After about a minute I began to feel flush. My skin was turning red and my throat was swelling up a little bit. I could definitely feel the effects, but it was far from painful. About 1-2 minutes in I was even cracking jokes with KQ trying to keep the conversation light. I felt pretty good at this moment because at Ariana/Cheryls 2 minute marks they were either throwing up or unconscious; I was making Dad jokes.

Then we hit minute 3, and things began to change. I started to feel a clenching in my stomach and a little bit of nauseousness. Again, it wasn’t agonizing but it was getting worse and I wasn’t liking it. It was around this point when KQ applied both the 2nd and 3rd dose. At this point, I knew things were going to head downhill quick.

By minutes 5 the three doses were firing on all cylinders. My throat was swollen to the point where it was difficult to drink water, my skin was red as a tomato, I began to get extremely dizzy and disoriented, and my stomach was clenching in near unbearable pain. Frankly, that wasn’t what got me. I don’t have the words to describe what the other feelings were throughout my body, but it was a paralyzing sickness that had me in agony, unlike anything I have ever felt before. The worst part of it was, the acknowledgment that there was nothing I could immediately do to relieve the pain. I knew the poison was applied at all three points. I knew that I had at minimum 20 minutes left of this, if not significantly more. The best way to visualize my pain can only be described as the final scenes of the Netflix Original, “Into the Wild.”

At minute 10 I finally purged. Throwing up the 1.5 mL of water I previously chugged into that pretty blue plastic kids bucket. It looked like the bucket I used to have when making sand castles on the beach in Florida. Wow, look how far I’ve come! Throwing up was a momentary relief as it freed up the clenching of my stomach for about 2 minutes. But the flashes came in waves and only moments later, I was back in the same agonizing pain. We were told to continuously drink water when we could, but it was extremely difficult to do so given the swollen throat and overall disorientation we were in. Given that my stomach had run out of the water to purge, the subsequent flashes were more agonizing than the first.

After the third purge and at about the 20 minutes mark, I was so weak that I fell to the floor on my left side. This was actually a blessing in that I accidentally knocked off the poisonous points off my left arm. I was fearful KQ was going to re-apply them, but she actually told me she was getting ready to remove them anyways. The next 10 minutes involved no more purges, but still, an agonizing pain that slowly but surely waned away. At the 30-minute mark, I was still hurting and weak, but it was bearable. At this point, Ariana was at her 50-minute mark and Cheryl was at her 40-minute mark. They were both feeling considerably better and even giving each other smiles and subtle laughs. The same laughs that I would probably give my friends. A “holy shit we really just did that” laugh.

Luckily for me, it was only at this point when “the other end” came into play. I was stable enough to be able to crawl to the bathroom where I did my business without issue. I was able to walk back to my spot without incident where I spent the next 10 minutes in an uncomfortable, yet an increasingly normalized state.

45 minutes later, it was over. While still a little shaken up, I was in good spirits and feeling fine. KQ brought us out fresh tea and fruit to replenish our electrolytes. I knew I had to ride my motorcycle back, so I spent some extra time lying around and sipping on the tea. Before we all left, we completed the ceremony by “giving our bodies back to Mother Earth.” Do you want to guess what that means? You got it, we poured our buckets of vomit in KQ’s garden as a gift to this planet. You’re welcome, Earth.

Post Cleanse

KQ told us that some people felt energetic after the cleanse and some people were very tired. I was one of those very tired people. I went back to my hotel and rested for the next two hours. When I awoke, I didn’t feel considerably great, but was simply thankful that I didn’t have frog poison running through my lymphatic system.

In the coming hours and days, I can definitively say that I felt better. I had more energy than I had before the cleanse. I was more motivated. I was less tired. I truly felt rejuvenated.

Now listen up, I am not here to tell you that this cleanse worked how that practitioners claim it medically should. I am fully aware that it could entirely be a placebo effect and that I might just be changing my attitude and behaviors on the notions that I am “newly cleansed.” But that didn’t and still doesn’t matter for me. I did this to experience and try something new. Whether a placebo or not, I felt and continue to feel better.

This cleanse was also a significant turning point that I was able to use to give up alcohol. As of writing this post, I have not had alcohol for more than a week. While that seems like nothing, that is probably the longest I have gone without alcohol since I was 21 and I plan to extend that throughout my time in New Zealand and Australia.

You can be your own judge as to whether I am insane, whether the cleanse worked, or whether you would ever do it. All I know is that I feel pretty damn good, I have a unique experience to look back on for the rest of my life, and I have given up alcohol for the foreseeable future – all for the cost of $85 and 40 minutes of pain. For me? Worth it.