Betel nut visions

[DaveA]

One thing I really appreciate about this forum is the expertise, and I am not surprised to see that it extends far beyond ethnographic weapons. How astonishing to learn that betal nut may have hallucinogenic effects similar to the fly agaric, a "poisonous" mushroom! The fly agaric is ingested in many locales around the world.

Now I'm wondering about the relationship between ritual/social use of psychoactive substances and some of the more fantastical designs we have seen on some weapons, such as the one posted in this thread. It would be interesting, even astonishing, to find common designs across disparate cultures that might be more related to brain chemistry than cross-cultural pollination! Are there examples of (presently) unexplained commonalities in designs among widely disparate cultures?

Dave A.

Originally Posted by Marcus

I assume you did something to alkalize the preparation. Arecoline is a weak base and will be charged at normal pH, so that, like the cocaine in coca leaves, it will be poorly absorbed unless an effort is made to change the pH

The molecule's structure makes it likely to work on acetylcholine receptors of which there are two types, muscarinic and nicotinic. It is believed to be a partial activator of muscarinic receptors, so that might have some mild hallucinogenic effects similar to Amanita muscaria. It's potential activity on nicotinic receptors has not been well studied, although its anthelmintic properties suggest that it may stimulate invertebrate nicotine receptors. For some unknown reason I do have a bottle of arecoline in the lab, although we have no record of having done experiments with it previously. We will go ahead and test it on a couple of human nicotine receptor subtypes probably later today (http://papke.med.ufl.edu/index.html).