THE EGO TRIP, psychedelic toads, a trail of deaths and the guru who peddled transcendence

314pp., paperback, White Rabbit, London, 2026

ISBN: 9781399617956

Also published in the USA in 2026.

South African journalist Kimon de Greef investigates the rise and fall of Mexican doctor, Octavio Rettig, who in 2011 visited the Seri people, adopted their chants, claimed he had revived their forgotten indigenous ritual - smoking the secretions of the Sonoran Desert toad, which releases a potent a hallucinogen also known as the “God molecule” - and presented himself globally as a practitioner of indigenous medicine.

"An unusually clear-eyed view ... As methodical, exacting, well-written and exceptionally reported as you'd expect ... I challenge any reader not to see this highly enjoyable book as a parable for so much that’s wrong with the current economy. Everything from the undeserved authority of charlatans, to the rampant exploitation of the natural world, to the hiding of hyper-capitalism behind a shield of cod-mystical woo-woo: it’s all in there." Oliver Bullough, Guardian

"Entirely mesmerizing, a tale of psychedelic tourists, shamanistic grift, chemistry, chicanery, tribal history, a chemical gold rush in the Sonoran desert and, above all, the enduring human quest for transcendence. Richly reported and written with humour and flair, The Ego Trip is itself a trip and Kimon de Greef is a major talent" Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

Kimon de Greef is the recipient of the inaugural Ferriss-UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Guernica, and National Geographic, among others. His first book. co-authored with Shuhood Abader, is Poacher: Confessions from the Abelone Underworld, was published in 2018. He lives in Cape Town.