SWIM has known about this stuff for a while but the proportion of whinging experiences on what little has been submitted to Erowid had put him off until now.

But he spotted some when picking up some chuna (edible lime) from the Indian supermarket for an extraction, so bought some... £1.50 for 500g!

Anyway, he's chewing 3g with a little lime right now and it's awesome! Seriously, his kanna must be bunk because this is MUCH better, even though it's meant tobe no big deal. He feels very social and happy, nice little buzz going on. He loves it. Doesn't know how long to keep it in the mouth before discarding. Tickles the tounge a little. Cheeky. Try some!

Only problem is that the mouthful of copious saliva/lime/nuts would be a hindrance for going out... he hears one can buy extracts but unless they're dirt cheap would rather make his own if it's easy... any tips? Maybe a betel nut nosespray eh Lorax?!

SWIM ground his second 3g to save on chewing... woohoo this is the nicest unprocessed botanical upper he's come across! He's flying a little. Prefers it to kratom and ephedra. Initial buzz was shortlived though, it just toned down a little.

Anyway, processing methods for making it more paRTY-FRIENDLY ANYONE?

What other botanical or drug would you say the effects are similar to?

My friend just got a quarter pound of these nuts, and a bunch of limestone to go with it.

He said he chewed the stuff till his tongue was raw and almost bleeding from the limestone but he never felt anything, but apparently it takes alot for some people to feel it, or just more than one time of chewing.

So if anybody tries them and doesnt feel anything, dont freak out, its just you.

maya is currently giving some away for free if you order something above 10$

Hmm... that's a toughie. It's unlike any others he's had. You're buzzing, energetic, yet relaxed and calm at the same time. Perhaps it's closest to ephedrine, but much nicer because of the calmness and warmness... it made SWIM feel like hugging someone. It's definitely nicer than kratom. And I bet SWIM could get higher if he put more than 3g of powder in his mouth next time!

The peak high doesn't last long at all... no wonder they chew it constantly.

The tip of his tongue hurts now, like how it would if you'd burnt it on a hot drink... a REALLY hot one. Parts of his mouth are a bit sore too, like if they'd been burnt by hot cheese on a pizza. Eating dinner was unpleasant, too tingly.
Don't know if that's from the edible lime he used or the betel nut. Don't understand how they chew this all day- maybe their mouths toughen up, or it was the edible lime because in many places they chew it in a lime leaf instead (although in other places I read they do use a lime paste of some desciption).

Definitely needs an extraction for easy administering and to get rid of the burning (and cancer risk, black teeth and mouthful of spit!).
It would be lovely as a breath freshener spray, because you could then dose yourself up often without looking dodgy. The sublingual uptake of the powder was near instantaneous, a few minutes at most.

Here's the vault http://www.erowid.org/plants/betel/
Apparently the active chemical is arecoline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecoline another thing that comes up if you google it says that they are trying to make cocane analogues from arecoline

Yeah I think its the lime, perhaps the leaf is the answer.

Here we go, ethnogarden.com sell the extract, Can$40 for 1g... very pricey compared to the raw material.
Home extraction needed! Would one still need to use lime with this extract?

How they can compare it to caffeine, I don't know. Swim hates caffeine. He LOVED his 3g of betelnut.
They link to a page about its chemical structure.

Best read this too, apparently 8g of nut could be deadly and it shouldn't be used with an MAOI. Also some people are allergic.

Yes, it’s the lime. It’s highly alkaline (pH 12.4). It’s added to keep the mouth alkaline so that the alkaloids can absorb better. It’s also used for oral coca, and other similar oral quids for the very same reason.

You can use calcium carbonate instead. It doesn’t burn at all, but keeps the pH of the mouth alkaline so the alkaloids can absorb properly. But because it doesn’t burn and cause lesions to form like lime does, it doesn’t work quite as well.
It’s supposed to be the lime that leads to mouth cancer because of the constant lesions it causes, not the betel nut.



SWIM loves coffee. SWIM will have to give this a try sometimes. He’ll use calcium carbonate instead. SWIM doesn’t fancy getting mouth cancer.

SWIM has read up on it over at Edot- seeing as how it's potentially carcinogenic he might just buy some arecoline, rather than make an extract with IPA. It can be snorted and smoked apparently but peeps seem to prefer sublingual.
He just tried chewing some nut with sodium bicarb instead of lime and it worked a little, but not very well... even when his mouth is pre-stripped by the lime. Yeah save your mouth

Try calcium carbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate. Calcium carbonate gets the pH of the mouth much higher than sodium bicarbonate can.

Calcium carbonate can bring your mouth to pH 9.8 which should work quite well.

Sodium bicarbonate can bring your mouth to only pH 8.3 which isn’t very good.


I saw a study that proved that oral lime use alone can cause mouth cancer, so stay away from using lime.

Arecoline, the main alkaloid of betel nut has a pKa of 7.7. So at pH 7.7 50% is freebased. At pH 8.7, 90% is freebased, and at pH 9.7 99% is freebased.

The mouth has a pH of about 7.0. It varies though. At pH 7.0 less than 50% of the arecoline is freebased so it's poorly absorbed.

Freebased drugs like freebase arecoline absorb through the mouth more quickly than salt forms do. So to make it absorb better, you need to bring the pH of the mouth up.

Sodium bicarbonate is too water soluble. It immediately dissolves and is quickly neutralized by the acids in the mouth. So it only brings the mouth to pH 8.3 for a very short time. Because of that, it’s one of the least effective bases for oral use or intranasal use.

Like calcium hydroxide, calcium carbonate is almost insoluble in water so it doesn’t rapidly dissolve and stays there in your mouth keeping the pH at 9.8 for a long time allowing the arecoline more time to absorb as freebase. So it should be far more effective than sodium bicarbonate.

These same rules also apply to snuff like Yopo.

Ha, and there was SWIM with a mouthful of pH 12.4! His tongue is now covered in painful blisters. His tastebuds are badly swollen. The skin's come off his gums in places.
He can't believe that one tenth of the world spend their days with a mouthful of calcium hydroxide burns... he must've been meant to dilute it or something? Feeling really sorry for himself, it's going to be a painful week of soup-eating. Don't do it kids!!

They use a tiny ball of wet lime the size of a pea. They wrap it in leaves to keep most of it away from the skin in the mouth.

How much lime did you use?

About that amount. But he placed it straight onto his tongue, then chucked in the nuts.
He's got sore patches at the back of his mouth, all over really. The nastiest is the blisters running down either side of his tongue from the tip. Ouch ouch ouch.

With no leaves for protection, the lime did it's damage easily.

SWIM knows the feeling. He used lime a few times sublingually before with bufotenine and then again with 5-MeO-DMT. Be glad you didn't try sodium carbonate. Unlike sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate works, but causes worse lesions than lime. SWIM tried it once with bufotenine and was really sorry he did. It hurt him for a few days.

Unfortunately, this lime stuff isn't very good for your teeth. Don't do it to often.

I have a feeling these mouth sores are similar to the rawness that youd get from sucking the sugar off a whole box of sour patch kids in a boring movie. But 100x worse.

Ohayoco, perhaps looking up some natural remedies for the soreness of the mouth would help, I tried to find some but they all suggested using lime..HAHAHAHAHA! anyway I hope you feel better, and dont be so down about having to eat soup, I LOVE SOUP!

Ok I just went to grab a bag of herb and picked up a handful of these and some lime.

I just sprinkled the lime in the bag with the nuts and mixed it up to where the nuts were pretty white, looked like sugar coated treats. However they diddnt taste like sugar coated treats, but not horrible either, just a bit earthy.

I noticed a slight tightning of my chest and a relaxed feeling mins after sucking on them and sprinkling a little lime in my mouth for good mesure. I eventually migrated them over to my cheeks and had one on each side.

Id say the effects on my 25-30 min drive home were that of smoking a few hits of some moderatly decent pot.

Plenty of spitting, a large blister on my cheek, and my tounge is pretty sore.

Worth a try, id like to do an extract on them if I could to injest it some other way.

I believe the extract can be snorted with some base or taken sublingually with some base, but not ingested orally. The best base for this purpose is unfortunately calcium hydroxide; calcium carbonate is a close second.