Mike Tyson is opening up about some of the darkest chapters of his past in a new Netflix documentary, and one of the most startling revelations has nothing to do with the ring. The 60-year-old former heavyweight champion says he came dangerously close to losing everything during his career. Sources state that it happened not from an opponent, but from his own body giving out on him.
In the film, Tyson recalls a moment that still haunts him. “When I think about a low point, I think about this, OD’ing. I’m bleeding out, my nose is bleeding and I’m hysterical. I’m sweating,” he says.
It’s a visceral image and according to Tyson, it wasn’t an isolated incident.
“I OD’d, I’ve done it plenty of times but this one was a little more extreme than others,” he admits, suggesting that this particular episode stood apart even from a pattern he’d grown used to.
Watching someone you love spiral like that takes a toll on the people around them too. Tyson’s third wife, Lakiha “Kiki” Spicer appears in the documentary describing the helplessness she and others close to him felt during that period.
“We were all trying to think how we can get Mike to get better,” she says.
That search eventually led somewhere unexpected. Spicer explains how a connection through a friend opened the door to an unconventional path. “At the time we had this friend, he knew a shaman who does this thing called 5 Meo-DMT, it comes from the Bufo alvarius toad,” she says.
The compound often referred to informally as toad venom because of its origin in the secretions of the Colorado River toad, is a potent psychedelic that has drawn growing attention in wellness circles, though its effects remain largely anecdotal rather than clinically proven.
The documentary doesn’t shy away from how intense that first encounter was for Tyson. He describes it as something close to a turning point. “We did an intervention with some toad, you know. DMT. And it blew my mind. I’ve done it over 100 times,” he says.
During a session, Tyson grows visibly anxious, worried he might not wake up from the psychedelic state he’s entered. Spicer is there beside him, offering reassurance as he works through the fear in real time, a reminder that for all the talk of transformation.
Tyson credits the ritual with reshaping some of his habits going forward. “I haven’t used [ ] and drink since,” he says. He has also folded the practice into how he approaches life more broadly, treating it almost like a compass for moments that matter most. “Any time I have to make a big decision about anything, I take the toad,” he says.
Spicer for her part, frames the appeal in broader terms, suggesting it offers a kind of mental reset for people wrestling with all sorts of personal battles.
“Whatever kind of [ ] or things that you’re going through, it helps level them in your mind,” she says. There’s no clinical backing in the documentary for the idea that the compound reverses dependency or resolves the issues Tyson describes, and experts caution against treating anecdotal accounts like his as a blueprint.
