The isolate is still used pretty rarely, I haven't found anyone using it with other things. I've got a bit obsessed and have been hunting for info on other forums. No idea of contraindications. But the nuts are chewed by a large proportion of the world, it's the fourth most used drug worldwide apparently (I presume behind tobacco, nicotine and alcohol), so I'm sure there are shamen merrily chewing away while they're tripping somewhere in the world. Here's a map showing geographical distribution of use
Betel - Wikipedia
I wouldn't recommend using arecoline while you're tripping, because I've read that if you get your dosage wrong you're a goner. SWIM was chewing 3g of nuts, and I read 8-10 nuts can be fatal to some people. Don't know if this is all people, or just in a certain situation, or if some people are sensitive and it's only dangerous for them, maybe they're the allergic ones. Just don't know. So with the isolate, being conservative, that's like the difference between a 5mg dose and a 13mg one! The guy on Edot who snorted 10mg said it felt like way too much, so that 'fits'. That's why SWIM wants to pre-prepare individual doses when he gets his hands on some. Although looking at those figures, he's not sure if he trusts his scale. Might as well take up henbane with those odds!
If so many people in the world chew it, surely these figures can't be right? Is it not possible to fit 8g in your mouth at one time? It's easily possible, and that means a lot of people would've tried it! Hmmm...
As for chewing the nuts while tripping, I definitely wouldn't recommend putting edible lime anywhere near your mouth while spaced out! And you'd be dribbling it all down your top, the quantity of saliva produced is unbelievable.
There's nothing visionary about betel... it's purely recreational. SWIM wants to use it as an alternative to alcohol. It only lasts half an hour, so you could go out, chew some arecoline in gum every now and then, have a dance, then by the time you got home you'd be sober again!
Ethnogarden are selling it for 10x more than other (non-entheogenic) sources. You can buy it 10x cheaper from chemical companies, SWIM's seen it on the internet (and this fits with what an Edot member wrote in a thread over there). But he hasn't bought any because he's having trouble finding any that definitely say FCC or USP grade... these chemistry sites are confusing! How do they write what grade it is? Is it just inherent in the chemical code, with each chemical having a few different codes to differentiate the grades?
I've picked up from a few sources that it's a 'muscimol agitator' (?) or something, meaning it works on the same bit of the brain as amanita (altough the effects are very different). Also people are using it as a raw material for making cocaine analogs (precursor? I don't know the lingo).
Acolon_5 used to chew betel, I found an old post of his on drug-forum. But he chewed them without lime as a coffee alternative. Where are you Acolon-5?!
