Why I Became a Kambo Practitioner

It Did Not Start Well

My first experience with Kambo was not what I expected.

I had heard about it the way most people in wellness circles do — through word of mouth, fragments of information, and the kind of quiet reverence that surrounds plant medicines and traditional practices. Something about it called to me. I was curious, open, and willing.

What I was not, was prepared. And neither, it turned out, was the person serving it.

Not because Kambo is inherently dangerous — it is not, when approached correctly. But because the session lacked what I now understand to be the non-negotiables: thorough screening, conservative application, proper water protocol, and a practitioner who understood the physiological reality of what they were administering.

The person serving me had some training. They were not malicious. But confidence is not the same as competence, and enthusiasm is not the same as preparation. In the space between those two things, things can go wrong.

And they did.

What That Experience Taught Me

Fainting during a Kambo session is not, in itself, catastrophic. The body recovers. But it is a signal — one that should not be ignored.

It told me that something in the approach was off. Too much, too fast, without sufficient understanding of how this medicine interacts with the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, and the individual physiology of the person receiving it.

That feeling became a question I could not stop asking: what would it look like to do this properly?

The Search for a Real Foundation

I did not walk away from Kambo after those early sessions. If anything, the experience deepened my interest — but it redirected it entirely.

I stopped looking for the next session and started looking for real knowledge. I wanted to understand the biochemistry. The peptides. The contraindications and why they exist. The history of how this practice came from the Amazon to the West, and what gets lost in that translation. The difference between a ceremony and a clinical application. The ethics of sourcing. The responsibility that comes with holding space for someone in a state of physiological intensity.

That search eventually led me to Jason Fellows and the Tribal Detox School in Creede, Colorado.

Training With Jason Fellows

What I found at the Tribal Detox School was different from anything I had encountered in the Kambo world up to that point.

Jason Fellows has spent years building a framework for Kambo practice that takes the medicine seriously — not as a ritual object or a wellness trend, but as a pharmacologically active substance that demands rigorous understanding, clear protocols, and genuine respect for the person receiving it.

It was, in the best sense, humbling. There was far more to know than I had realised. And the more I learned, the more I understood why my early experience had gone the way it did.

What Changed

But the certification was not the point. The point was the foundation it represented — a way of approaching this work that I could stand behind completely.

Everything I now do as a practitioner flows directly from that foundation, and from the lesson my early experience gave me:

Why I Am Telling You This

I am not sharing this story to position myself as someone who suffered and emerged wiser. That framing is too neat, and it is not really the point.

I am sharing it because I think it matters — for you, as someone who may be considering Kambo — to know that the person you work with has genuinely reckoned with what this medicine demands.

Not everyone who offers Kambo has done that reckoning. Some are well-intentioned but underprepared. Some are experienced but careless. Some have absorbed the ritual without the responsibility.

If you come to me for a session, you will be screened thoroughly. You will be prepared properly. You will understand what is happening and why. And you will have someone with you who is not just trained — but who has a personal, embodied reason to make sure your experience is safe.

That is what I did not have. It is what I now offer.

A Note on the Medicine Itself

None of this is a criticism of Kambo.

The secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor contains sixteen bioactive peptides that have been studied by pharmacologists since the 1960s. Vittorio Erspamer — twice nominated for the Nobel Prize — called it “a fantastic chemical cocktail with potential medical applications.” The research is real. The effects are real. The potential is real.

Kambo deserves to be approached with the same rigour we would bring to any pharmacologically active substance. That is not a limitation on the medicine. It is a form of respect for it.

If You Are Considering Kambo

Read. Ask questions. Understand the contraindications before you book. Know what hyponatremia is and why it matters. Ask your practitioner about their training, their protocols, and their approach to conservative application.

You deserve a practitioner who welcomes those questions. Who has asked them of themselves.

I am here if you want to talk.