A friend of mine reading a book about Micronesia recently asked me by email, “What is beetle nut?” A reasonable question from someone who lives in the States, away from the areca palms that grow throughout the Pacific and SE Asia. Betel nut is the seed of this tree. Harvested, processed, and consumed in a wide variety of forms, it is a drug, traditional, cultural, recreational, and, historically, medicinal. The seed is a shade larger than the last joint on your thumb, smooth, oval, and light green, with a cap on one end from which it was once suspended from the tree. The pod is a fibrous husk containing a soft white seed half the size of an almond. Different cultures use the seed different ways. Some remove and dry the seed, then slice, powder, or roast it. Place a pinch between the cheek and gum, sometimes mixed with spices like clove, cardamom, or tobacco. Other cultures chew it in some preparation of its fresh form.
Here in Micronesia, we like our betelnut au natural, and its use is recreational and ubiquitous. Au natural, what’s that entail? Just that Micronesians don’t prefer to process the seed, but chew it fresh and still in the husk. The preparation goes like this. Take a betelnut. Bite off and discard the cap. Bite the pod in half and split it, exposing the nut. Dust the inside with a pinch of powdered coral lime, which helps to lacerate the gums and speeds uptake of the chemicals in the seed, with the added bonus of being tasty, because, really, who doesn’t like the way coral tastes, right? Huh? Yeah, everyone here carries around a vial, medicine bottle, or sandwich baggie full of white powder, which, after having lived in L.A. for a while, was a real head twister at first. Okay, we got betelnut, we got powdered lime. What can we add to make this bundle extra delicious and boost the carcinogen level too? Wait, betelnut is carcinogenic? Oh yeah! Proven to increase risk of carcinoma in the mouth, gums, and everything downstream, right through to the prostate and cervix. But if you’re a Micronesian user, that isn’t quite exciting enough, so you take half a cigarette, still wrapped in the paper, stick it in the middle of the wad, and pinch the husk back together. I have seen folks in the Solomons wrap the whole assembly in a betel leaf, which keeps everything together and provides a peppery taste, but that’s not the fashion in Chuuk; just pop the whole seed preparation in your mouth, let your saliva start washing the mix and gently masticate occasionally to keep things moving. You, my friend, are now chewing betelnut. Don’t forget to spit.
It’s the South Pacific version of chewing tobacco and is as popular as smoking in, say, Asian cultures. Everyone from high school kids to grandmothers does it, and the sidewalks, few though they may be, reflect this, as, once you get a betelnut chew going, the saliva you produce mixes with the seed to form a bright red expectorant that people spit, well, everywhere. I thought that the sidewalks in Honiara, capitol of the Solomons were painted red at first, before I realized I was walking on a multilayered patchwork of human expectorant. Casual and even formal conversations occur with both parties mumbling like surly teens through a huge wad of betelnut, with frequent chat breaks to lean over a spit. Drivers and passengers in Chuuk don’t bother with a spit cup and they can’t spit out the window without dribbling a stain of juice on the paint, so they open the car door and lean down to spit on the street, reminiscent of the freshman moving car drunken vomit hijinks we’re all trying to forget.
There’s nothing pretty about betelnut. Habitual chewing over a period of time causes permanent tooth discoloration. Though some cultures once considered the red stained lips of a chewer to enhance beauty, it is now just part of the fun. There’s nothing like having a young, nubile Micronesian girl catch my eye only to ruin it for me by smiling back with betelnut stained lips and teeth just before she emits a bright red stream of juice onto the ground the volume of which would put Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider to shame. I appreciate a woman who can spit in a dainty yet effective fashion, but betelnut spit…deal breaker.
As with the satisfaction of most oral fixations, the formalized ritual of preparing and consuming betelnut is amusing, engaging, gives folks something to do, and becomes mentally linked with the satisfaction of the addiction, which means it is comforting. Think of the lengths to which people go to get that perfect cup of coffee or build a decent joint. It breaks up the monotony of the day. Making up a chew is fun. It is also a social affair: sharing betelnut is like sharing a smoke or having a cocktail, an excuse to hang out and chat, and in many betelnut cultures, it is considered social nicety to offer a chew to guests when they enter your home.
So what’s it like to chew betelnut? No more repugnant for a first timer than a glass of scotch, a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, or a wad of Levi Garrett, I suppose. Many drugs are described as acquired tastes. Remember your first sip of beer? Sure you love the stuff now, but when your dad gave you your first sip so you’d leave him alone? Nasty. Betelnut’s the same way, with the added bonus of making you look ridiculous because now you have a chipmunk cheek and speak like you have a mouthful of marbles. The taste is bitter at first, followed by an astringent bitter taste, with a hint of tree bark and…bitter. Maybe that’s the lime causing that. I skipped the cigarette in my preparation, so there was no familiar nasty taste in there to work from, just an all new frontier of nasty taste, earthy, wood smoky, and bitter. Did I mention it’s bitter?
The effect was, I thought at first, non-existent, like the first time people smoke pot and swear they don’t feel anything. I was sitting and chatting with two other guys when I first tried betelnut, and we’d been having a lively if linguistically stilted conversation while preparing our chews. We continued to chat as we began masticating, and then I began to concentrate on the taste and on not swallowing or drooling my expectorant, We all drool on ourselves sometimes; don’t lie, you do it, but it usually dries clear and goes unnoticed. Not so with the tell-tale rusty red of betelnut, so I was absorbed with not getting any of the stuff on me. By the time I started feeling a warm, tingling sensation in my cheek and gum area, I realized that we’d all kicked back in our seats, and that conversation had ceased. I looked around and everyone seemed a little glazed. Not slack jawed or stupefied. Mellow. Betelnut is supposed to be a mild stimulant, but in the way of many stimulants, Ritalin, say, chewing this stuff seemed to round of the edges and make everyone relax, though it is often difficult to distinguish when a Micronesian man is relaxed or in high gear.
I left the wad in as long as I could stand, making a half hearted effort to chew every once in a while, but I never got one of those really rusty red spits going that a practiced user can stream like ol’ Clint zapping a mangy cur. When I started feeling queasy, I got up to get rid of the wad and discovered a slightly woozy sensation to accompany my nausea, but then I’m a sissy when it comes to stimulants like caffeine, so no surprise there. After picking all the husk out of my mouth and running my tongue over the patch of cheek and gum where the lime and the husk had made them raw and sore, I was able to place another drug on the pass list. Looks like I’ll have to stick with nitrogen for the time being. Anybody know anything about that stuff called khat they chew in Somalia?
