Kneeling on the tiled floor of a small kitchen in Newcastle, Julie lunges forwards to grab a plastic bucket in front of her. She crouches, hunched over the container as wave after wave of nausea pulses through her guts.
After 30 minutes of relentless heaving and retching she sits back, sobbing, and reaches for a cup of water as a man sitting cross-legged beside her waves his heavily tattooed arms in the air over her still-shuddering back.
Julie isn’t suffering from the excesses of a big night out, or dealing with the rages of morning sickness. Instead she has paid this man – a ‘shaman’ – £150 so he can poison her with highly toxic secretions from an Amazonian tree frog. The intention is to make her vomit profusely – and it works.
Called ‘kambo’, this extreme and dangerous ritual originates in the jungles of Brazil and Peru where the tribes believe the dramatic ‘purging’ helps to clear their hunters of evil spirits and make them more powerfully effective on the next day’s mission.
Now, thanks to the modern wellness industry, which is peddling it on social media as an extreme form of detox to help with anxiety, stress and depression, the practice has travelled from rustic huts in South America to the fitted kitchens of Britain.
‘Kambo’ is an extreme and dangerous ritual which uses the poison from an Amazonian tree frog
The tradition originates in the jungles of Brazil and Peru where the tribes believe the dramatic ‘purging’ helps to clear their hunters of evil spirits
Julie is a singer and holistic counsellor, and was persuaded to try ‘sitting with kambo’ in a bid to get rid of the ‘stored trauma’ she believes she’s been holding on to for years.
‘It’s not about hallucinations,’ she says, ‘It’s about cleansing and getting trauma out.’
The day after her kambo experience, Julie posted a video for her 10,000 TikTok followers saying: ‘It was brutal. I got a lot up. I purged a lot. I cried. I was purging for about half an hour and it was hard but I felt such a release and weight off me. The strangest feeling.’
The experience wiped her out and she spent the rest of the day in bed.
Kambo is one big step beyond juice cleanses and colonic irrigation, and it is clearly not for the fainthearted – but experts now warn that this extreme new age detox practice could be deadly.
In April Kristian Trend, 40, a wellness coach from Leicester, met with a shaman in a small, terraced house on a residential street in the city and had frog poison applied to tiny wounds on his upper arm just like Julie. But something in the poison was too much for Kristian’s body and he died at the scene.
He is believed to be the first British victim of this extreme detox practice – but at least six deaths have been linked with the poison in other parts of the world.
One would normally associate this kind of reckless behaviour with feckless gap-year kids, looking for an authentic Amazonian encounter but, very worryingly, a quick search on social media reveals plenty of opportunity to book the kambo experience for as little as £85 (sometimes reduced to £65 for people on a low income) right across the UK.
One post on Facebook called kambo ‘a special process and an amazing gift to our mind, body and spirit’, reassuring users that they will feel ‘safe and held’ throughout their ‘encounter with the frog’ and adding, as a bonus, that the ceremony finishes with ‘a nutritious plant-based meal’.
Another claims it ‘works on the multiple layers of body, mind and spirit, helping the cells to remove toxins… in alignment with the body’s lymphatic system’. Yet another goes: ‘The frog has very few natural predators which leaves it with fearless energy… which can be passed to us during the kambo ceremony.’
Sometimes the shaman will come to you. Or you can book one of a number of bells and whistles residential retreats both in the UK and across Europe, where the experience is bundled in with yoga, meditation, breathwork and sound healing.
Kristian Trend died in April after he took part in the ritual
South American tribes ‘harvest’ the poison by tying the frog’s stretched legs to four sticks, then prodding it to stimulate the stress response that produces the toxin
During a kambo ceremony, the shaman uses the sharp end of a burning stick to create small blisters in the skin
Sometimes called sapo (the Spanish and Portuguese word for toad or frog), kambo is a poisonous secretion from the giant monkey tree frog native to the Amazon Basin. South American tribal Indians ‘harvest’ the poison by tying the frog’s stretched legs to four sticks, then prodding it to stimulate the stress response that produces it.
During a kambo ceremony, the shaman uses the sharp end of a burning stick to create small blisters in the skin – usually in a line of ‘kambo dots’ on the shoulder. The blistered skin is scuffed off and a dab of dried frog poison applied directly into the wounds where it rapidly enters the system.
Peptides in the poison are absorbed through the damaged skin, which rapidly triggers ‘purging’. This means vomit – lots of vomit – which is why everyone participating in a kambo ceremony sits by a bucket.
In some people it also triggers violent diarrhoea, rapid heart rate, swelling of the face and sweating.
The day after her kambo ceremony, Julie posted on TikTok to show (‘unfiltered’) that her eyes and lips were still swollen.
In 2005, explorer and documentary maker Bruce Parry was filmed taking kambo during a visit to the Amazonian jungle as part of his BBC series, Tribe. It is traumatic to watch him vomiting copiously into the mud floor then dashing off into the jungle for a further ‘evacuation’. He looks utterly miserable and in considerable distress, muttering: ‘I just want this to stop.’
Afterwards he says: ‘I feel genuinely as if there is nothing left inside me. In every sense I am empty. It’s not a great feeling.’
The promise, when you’ve got nothing left to vomit, is a feeling of oneness and relaxation.
Once the toxins had left his body, Parry said ‘that a massive headache and gripping inside my gut has lifted. I feel fine now. I feel light and bouncy. I wasn’t expecting that.’
Despite the brutality of her experience, Julie is positive about the sense of calm she was left with afterwards. ‘I don’t want to watch TV, I’ve got no desire for alcohol or processed food,’ she says, ‘I just want to be outside with nature and looking at the stars.’
It seems many people who try kambo go back for more, time after time and certainly a number of women I spoke to who had tried kambo – but didn’t want to go on the record about their experience – were keen to point out the beneficial aspect.
Actor Orlando Bloom is among some high-profile names who have tried it more than once. In an interview with GQ magazine in 2024 he said ‘it was pretty brutal in terms of what it does to the body in the moment’ but afterwards, ‘I had this feeling of being clearer…’
Yet there have been warnings about its safety for many years. Its sale and marketing has been illegal in Brazil since 2016 and after two deaths in Australia its use was prohibited there in 2021.
Natasha Lechner, 39, died of an acute cardiac event minutes after taking it in 2019. Two years later Jarrad Antonovich, 46, suffered a ruptured oesophagus after taking it at a wellness retreat in New South Wales.
Now the first British death from kambo has raised fresh calls for the substance to be banned in the UK but as it is not a licensed medicine it does not come under the jurisdiction of the UK watchdog, the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency).
It is difficult to find western toxicologists with knowledge and experience of the potential dangers of ancient tribal practices such as kambo.
Now the first British death from kambo has raised fresh calls for the practice to be banned in the UK
Jarrad Antonovich, 46, suffered a ruptured oesophagus after taking kambo at a wellness retreat in New South Wales
But even Professor David Nutt, an eminent neuropsycho- pharmacologist who has led studies at Imperial Collage London looking into the potential therapeutic benefits of illicit drugs and psychoactive substances (and who is much loved by new age communities), warns that kambo ‘sounds like a dangerous fad’.
Indeed the risk to life is very real. Last year, toxicology specialists in Italy and Greece came together to publish a review of studies into the rise of kambo use, warning about the risk of sudden death. The authors explain that, over the past 20 years, kambo made its way to urban centres in Brazil and worldwide, marketed as a ‘detox’ treatment.
‘It has eventually gained popularity in Western healing circles, especially among cancer patients who find no benefit from conventional medicine.’ Their review found cases of ‘oesophageal rupture’ (due to excessive vomiting) and septic shock among users, as well as hallucinations, seizures, psychosis and panic attacks. Other severe side-effects include confusion, memory loss, lethargy, convulsions, psychosis and damage to the kidneys, pancreas and liver.
Some patients, they found, required up to eight weeks hospital treatment – but these extreme episodes were more likely to be exacerbated in patients with ‘pre-existing risk factors’.
Although the vast majority of social media posts about kambo talk about the brutality of its effects in an overwhelmingly positive light, one does report a group ceremony where a woman had ‘cardiac issues’ and an ambulance was called to take her to hospital.
Another warns: ‘There are a lot of sketchy providers out there. Many don’t have training and just order stuff online and call themselves a shaman so they can profit from people’s gullibility.’
Kristian Trend’s death in April might have been a tragic accident or it might have been precipitated by other health factors – it is known he had battled a rare form of cancer in his 20s. A police investigation into his suspected poisoning is ongoing.
It certainly highlights the potential dangers of this increasingly popular new age practice.
t he toxicologists who carried out the review stress ‘the lack of scientific evidence supporting kambo’s safety and efficacy underscores the necessity for caution.
‘Documented cases of acute intoxication leading to life-threatening effects emphasise that the risks extend beyond immediate discomfort. The reported cases of fatalities and severe health complications underscore the urgent need for rigorous screening protocols, especially for those with pre-existing medical conditions.’
Their message is clear: ‘With the spread of this practice through media globalisation and the internet, the number of cases and consumers is likely to increase.
‘Therefore, policymakers in various countries should take measures to prevent the spread of this dangerous substance worldwide.’
Dabbling with such a powerful toxin seems, at best, foolish.
It is, perhaps, yet another case of the modern wellness industry co-opting ancient ‘rituals’ without fully understanding – or respecting – their power.
Some names have been changed to protect identities.
