The Real-Life Ari Gold Says Toad Venom Calmed the Rage That Inspired Entourage
Ari Emanuel — the WME/Endeavor chief whose temper was the real-life template for Entourage's Ari Gold, and who now owns UFC, WWE, and a chunk of London's West End — has a new memoir out, Roll the Calls. In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Emanuel — whose rage is well documented, by his own admission and everyone else's — credits a session with 5-MeO-DMT, the compound our own encyclopedia entry calls the "God Molecule," with taking real edge off it.
"I recently met a shaman in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took 5-MeO-DMT, produced by the Sonoran Desert toad," Emanuel tells the paper. "I've explored many [hallucinogenics], but I think that's the most powerful. You realise you're a pimple on the ass of an ant. It's been an incredible help to me to disavow a bunch of shit. And give myself and my life and my parents a break." He's candid that it hasn't switched the anger off entirely — "Recently, somebody did something and I hit the rage button. Defcon one," he says, though he adds that this time he "put the call on mute" instead of yelling.
It's a striking, very public data point for a compound we've covered from the inside before — see our own personal account of a Bufo session — but it's one man's story, not a treatment. 5-MeO-DMT remains a Schedule I substance in the US with no approved medical use, "shaman"-led sessions are unregulated and carry real physical and psychological risk, and nothing here is a substitute for actual anger-management or mental-health care.