While 5-MeO-DMT has the potential to bring about profound healing and transformation, it’s not for everyone.
Steve Rio and his wife, Austin, already had a long history of working with psychedelics before they tried 5-MeO-DMT for the first time.
“After our first couple experiences [with 5-MeO-DMT], it felt very obvious that this was our medicine, and this was the direction we wanted to go in,” Steve says.
It wasn’t just the “power and beauty” and transformational potential of 5-MeO-DMT that inspired Steve and Austin to focus on this particular substance in their work as practitioners of psychedelic-assisted therapy.
“We thought we were seeking out some of the best [facilitators] in the world, and what we found was just really challenging facilitation experiences where we just didn’t feel like it was being done with the level of care and safety that was necessary,” he explains. “And it just led us to believe that there was an opportunity to figure that out” and provide a better experience.
Steve and Austin co-founded Enfold in 2019, each bringing more than 20 years of experience in spiritual practice, breathwork, meditation and psychedelic ceremonies. Operating on an idyllic island in British Columbia’s Howe Sound, they accept a limited number of guests per year, for a spiritually grounded synthetic 5-MeO-DMT experience.
Steve joined us on the “Beyond the Trip” podcast to talk about their work at Enfold, and the spiritual and therapeutic potential of 5-MeO-DMT.
This powerful psychedelic substance – traditionally derived from the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad – isn’t scheduled under Canadian law, unlike other psychedelics with therapeutic potential such as psilocybin and MDMA.
“Enfold offers the most comprehensive 5-MeO-DMT program in the world,” the Enfold website explains. “We have been refining our safe and sacred process since 2019, which includes psycho-spiritual coaching, powerful entheogenic medicines, somatic and therapeutic modalities and an ongoing community support network.”
While “The Toad” has the potential to bring about profound healing and transformation, it’s not for everyone. Steve believes that practitioners need to be fully aware of the risks of using 5-MeO-DMT when screening potential clients.
“I think that this is one of the things that people just are not talking about at all,” he says. “This medicine is a profoundly dysregulating experience by nature. That is the point. All psychedelics carry some dysregulating qualities to them. You are dysregulating your state of consciousness. 5-MeO-DMT dysregulates you all the way to the level of the nervous system.
“One of the key aspects of this work at high dose is the fact that there is this nervous-system opening that occurs. We talk about it as a nervous-system reset. But that carries in it a whole bunch of potential risks and things to be aware of. That’s why I think it’s super important to screen very carefully. For people who are in any way psychologically unstable, this medicine is not a good fit.”
For those who are ready for a 5-MeO-DMT experience “and they are properly held through this experience,” many clients report “very dramatic shifts in levels of depression and levels of connectedness and levels of well-being in their lives,” Steve asserts in the podcast.
“When we saw the power of this medicine and we saw the impact that it had on our lives, and then we started working with it and saw there are also risks attached, there are a whole bunch of considerations here that we really take very, very seriously,” he adds. “We are exceptionally detail-oriented and careful about every aspect of our process and protocol. But the outcomes are so dramatic that it feels like it’s … worth the risk, and a lot of those risks can be mitigated by proper screening and preparation. And when people are well-supported, the outcomes are – there’s just nothing like it.”