My Toe and San Pedro - Part III: Let That Freak Toe Fly

We set up a retreat that summer. The night before our first ceremony, Chase held a meeting with the group to go over logistics and expectations of the ceremony. He talked a bit about what he loved about San Pedro, how it rewards you for meeting it halfway. If you put in the work outside of ceremony and integrate what it’s showing you about yourself, things will start falling into place.

The weather was near 100 degrees that week, requiring open-toe shoes for all. During the first ceremony, sitting under a tree and looking at my toe, I felt the urge to cover it up, but I observed this feeling, held my ego with compassion and told it “Everything is cool” and “No one gives a shit.” I let that freak toe fly all week. I felt super self-conscious of it at first, watching to see if anyone stared at it. Then after a couple days, I forgot to care.

One day we had group share — time for everyone to sit in a circle and take turns sharing what came up during the previous ceremony. When it was my turn, I put my naked toe front and center and told the whole story behind it. How this physical blemish on my foot represented so much self-judgment and insecurity for so long, and now, 28 years later, I am finally comfortable discussing it out in the open, showing it out in the open, and being ok with it. And that was it. I got a lot of smiles and laughs, and one of the other participants came up to me after and expressed a similar experience with her damaged toenail. So there you go. Growth.

During that retreat, I got the call from huachuma to serve it myself one day — a call I thought I’d never get. I had to get back to Peru and continue my medicine-work path. Two months later I was back in the Sacred Valley drinking San Pedro with Bernhard, a truly incredible huachumero from South Africa whom Chase trained with. Over the course of the next couple months, Bernhard supported me as I sat with everything from my own mortality to past lives to connecting with my deceased mother and her parents. Plus I walked around those ceremonies barefoot and Band-Aidless.

One evening after ceremony while lounging on Bernhard’s sofa, a sudden strong tingling enveloped my left foot, particularly in my left big toe… pulsating energy coursing through it like an electric massager working my foot from the inside. Two weeks later, same thing on the same couch at Bernhard’s: tingling and energy flowing through my foot.

A few more weeks passed, and I noticed my nail hadn’t changed in some time. Another month went by and the same, no growing, no change in size, shape, nothing. I could not believe it. I know correlation doesn’t equal causality -blah blah insert leading social scientists’ bullshit here — but this toe was growing yellow dark nail for 28 years, and then suddenly it stopped. When I got back to Los Angeles, I made an appointment with my podiatrist.

Dr. Costopoulus had seen my toenail a couple times before over the past few years. He didn’t recognize me until he looked at my toe.

“Ahh yes, I remember you.” he said directly to my toe, then looked up at me. “So, what’s going on?”

“Ever heard of San Pedro cactus?” I answered, though I knew the answer… the chances of a 60-something podiatrist in Manhattan Beach, California responding “why yes I have!” to that question were slim. But I’m working on never assuming anything.

Dr. Costopoulus confirmed my assumption, so I gave him the super broad strokes on San Pedro, described my tingly feet experience and how the nail stopped growing for 8 months… yet now it’s super sensitive.

“Wow, how about that.” he said as he turned his attention to back to my toe. After disinfecting my nail with alcohol, Dr. Costopoulus removed a disposable razor from a small paper wrapper — a super thin blade that shaved off some nail as soon as he scraped it. Immediate pain jolted me back in the chair. Noticing my reaction, he pumped my toe full of lidocaine and whittled the nail down before grabbing his pliers — big stainless-steel pinchers with a sharp nose. He came at my toe from all angles, clipping and snipping as blood began steadily flowing from where nail use to be. Then as he made another cut, the rest of the nail lifted like a lid off a tin can. We both looked at each other with surprise.

“This nail wants to come off”, he pointed out. He removed the old nail and then observed that a new nail was growing. And sure enough, a white slither of nail was protruding right from where a nail should be. San Pedro hadn’t finished with just stopping my nail from growing, it generated a whole new nail for me. And it’s still growing as I write this.

My mind loves to create narratives, connect the dots of events and build a story out of them. Sometimes the narratives I think are real turn out to be false — stories I put in my head because of what I want to hear, what I want to be true. But in the case of my toe, my story is truth. My toe experienced deep trauma. I neglected that and tried to deny it, resulting in a decades-long neurosis that didn’t serve me. And in the end, this this magic cactus transformed something I was so ashamed of into a teacher. Huachuma gifted me a lesson in how rejecting my toe — or any part of my God-given body — is a rejection of myself. How these judgments are pure constructs my mind creates to deal with fear. My nail served as a helpful reminder to be aware of how my self-love is charting in any given moment. And in the end huachuma rewarded my integration work and growth with a healthy toenail… it still looks weird but hey, who’s judging?

Like I mentioned before, this isn’t the only story I have like this. And I’m not the only one who has them. In addition to the wonders it works for mental health, this cactus has straightened spines, cured Tinnitus, rebalanced endocrine systems and sent cancer straight into remission. Come down to the Sacred Valley — my home now — and talk to anyone here that’s been working with San Pedro for some time. You’ll hear their stories too, and maybe even discover your own.