Source: PATRICK T. FALLON / Getty
Mike Tyson has flirted with death in the boxing ring and outside of it. But the retired heavyweight champ recently told the New York Post that he crossed over to the other side numerous times, and at one point, his number was up, dabbling with one of the most “organic” substances imaginable: toad venom.
“I ‘died’ during my first trip,” he said at last week’s Wonderland in Miami, FL. Fans of psychedelics and microdosing journey fled to Magic City for the two-day conference and discuss the use of hallucinogens and other dissociative drugs. “In my trips I’ve seen that death is beautiful,” he continued. “Life and death both have to be beautiful, but death has a bad rep. The toad has taught me that I’m not going to be here forever. There’s an expiration date.”
Tyson explained that he first smoked the psychedelic amphibian venom, which came from the Sonoran Desert Toad, on a dare four years ago. “I was doing heavy drugs like cocaine, so why not? It’s another dimension. Before I did the toad, I was a wreck,” he shared.
Cocaine and alcohol were familiar members of the fighter’s regimen well before 2017, however. During another interview last year with Yahoo Sports, Tyson said that he was so much of “a pig, high on cocaine” during the filming of the 2009 box-office smash The Hangover that he didn’t know he was set to be in it until the day before his cameo.
Since his introduction to the toad, though, Tyson has smoked its venom at least 52 more times and says he’s done it sometimes thrice in a day. He credits the newfound habit with helping him drop over 100 pounds in three months, as well as growing closer to his wife and kids too.
“The toughest opponent I ever faced was myself,” said the former Baddest Man on the Planet. “I had low self-esteem. People with big egos often have low self-esteem. We use our ego to subsidize that. The toad strips the ego.”
We’re sure that another opponent Tyson’s not too afraid of is Dr. Umar:
