And maybe because it didn’t hit me with the full barrage of panic symptoms-which also includes tunnel vision, foggy brain, shortness of breath, the inability to swallow, and an impending sense of death-kambo didn’t seem so bad. That’s because kambo had re-created a suite of symptoms I had actually experienced on hundreds of previous occasions. (The initiated call it “frog face.”) As I rocked back and forth with a blanket over my head, praying my body would finally begin purging this poison inside me, disappointment crept in: I had hoped to feel sicker. Kambo typically takes you from feeling fine to fluey in seconds, and pumps enough fluid into your face to mimic botched plastic surgery. My skull felt like it was being inflated with a bicycle pump, my heart raced, sweat sprang from my pores, and the walls of Brandy’s shoebox office crept closer. Almost instantly, shock waves of nausea hit me. But moments later, she flipped the little frog patties to flush fresh poison into my system. At this point, the discomfort felt tolerable, like the second day of a stomach bug. With my “gateways” open and the frog slime seeping into my system, Brandy and I waited. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play It’s popular enough these days to keep multiple kambo studios in Los Angeles in steady business, including this one in Beverly Hills. The violent purges it induces are believed to heal everything from addiction to Alzheimer’s. Kambo is derived from a different amphibian, whose secretions keep you closer to earth-your face rarely travels more than a few inches from your puke bucket. You may have heard of a toad you smoke, whose venom, when dried and inhaled, rockets you through the cosmos aboard a velvet spaceship. The patties comprised the toxic secretions of the giant monkey frog, which indigenous peoples in South America call kambo and have been using as a cure-all for dozens of generations. With a penknife, she then scraped off the tops of the blisters and place tiny patties of frog poison into these so-called “gateways,” to cook into my exposed epidermis. Carefully, she pressed the incense into my skin, sizzling a row of four equally spaced blisters. On the floor of her closet-sized office, she offered a short invocation for our journey, then lit a stick of incense, blowing until it glowed red. The healer told me to pull up my pants leg, baring the inside of my ankle. His personal healing process-from traditional anti-anxiety medication and cognitive behavioral therapy to magic mushrooms and meditation-is as rigorously researched as it is unorthodox. In his new book, No Time To Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks, ABC Chief National Correspondent Matt Gutman walks us through the science and treatment of one of the most under-diagnosed of anxiety disorders.
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