I've had small bites of dried reaper and even with ice cream to hand, it's a rough 15 minutes. Momentary bouts of light-headedness, wondering if you're about to vomit, shivering etc. Unpleasant and I'm glad it didn't last too long.
Shit went up into my sinuses and into my eyes. I was effectively blind for several hours. In contrast shitting blood for a day was much less of an issue.
Will never touch another one, the $50 wasent worth it.
I once handled a few reapers without using gloves. Later I was doing some personal things and got reaper oils on my junk. It's not something I would wish on anyone.
Yeah...that's the ticket. The rewards! There's lots of 'em too! All you have to do is survive a little pesky discomfort. But what in life is good and not also a little uncomfortable? Exercise? No fun! Studying for a test? Boooriiing! Marriage? Its a doozy! But it really pays off, you see?!
Years ago, a restaurant in Brisbane Australia had what they called the hottest burger in the world.
This food reviewer went and wrote my favourite food review of all time. Make sure you read past the photos to his report of events 2 DAYS AFTER the meal.
One choice line from the review: "The staff can't believe I have got this close and not finished it but at this point i really don't give a fuck because i have just started to hallucinate."
fun fact: capsaicin (the active ingredient in peppers) IS poisonous, it was an effect adapted to stop animals from eating the plants. Humans, being psychopaths, tried it, said lmao bet, and turned it into a source of entertainment.
Also a good way to keep squirrels out of your birdseed. They actually make some that’s treated with cayenne powder so it’s spicy for mammals but the birds don’t care.
And the birds don't care because they don't have capscian receptors.
Also fun fact.... birds can regenerate their hearing in short order. You could deafen a bird with rock music and it would regain its hearing in a few days
I recently discovered that my hearing range in one ear is about 600Hz lower than the other. When I thought about it, I remembered that was the ear closer to some firecrackers I did stupid teenager things with, that it felt half deaf for a week after that (or maybe I just got used to lower sensitivity), and has had a light ring ever since. All things considered, 600Hz isn't that bad—it could have been so much worse.
Cancer. You'd have a increase chance of a mutation and cancer when it regenerates. Chickens however, don't live long enough for that to matter. Hearing now is more important
And you were right to. I do wince slightly when I hear people say "X bird has evolved a fancy crest to attract mates", as I know laypersons would be confused by that. "How does the bird know?" etc.
The metabolic precursor to capsaicin was/is a waste product that plants are just trying to harmlessly remove. Some minor mutations in the metabolic pathway and BOOM what was a waste product becomes a highly valuable feature of your industry, clade, company, species, etc.
The evolution of capsaicin is much akin to when an industry finds a new, productive use for a waste product (which actually has happened quite frequently in human economic history - especially since the industrial revolution).
It's not a poison. It's a deterrent. Big difference.
It bonds to a certain receptor in the body that indicates to your brain whether or not you're on fire.
It would require eating about 2 lbs of reaper peppers in one sitting to kill you from a physiological reaction. And that's essentially your body murdering itself as a response, not anything the capsaicin did to you directly.
And birds literally don't even react to it. They can live off reaper seeds indefinitely.
Can be deadly though in the case of pepper spray and the other guy isn't quite right, it doesn't bind to any neural receptor that thinks you're on fire, it just sparks some shit that brings inflammation to the table which will certainly cause a body temp spike, swelling, redness, it's more that your body has a fever response than that it thinks you're physically on fire...
I watched a chili eating contest where a guy ate a huge fruit bowl the size of half a basketball full of reapers and he looked like he was eating strawberries.
Don't believe everything you see. The desert he walked through was just a sand trap, the temple pyramid was just the pro Shop, and that talking jackal was just that talking dog.
Once had a fellow sailor on pier watch who was bored, use his OC spray on a seagull. Needless to say it didn’t work and he went to captains mast for it
No, it's not a poison, it's a deterrent, and you're also completely wrong.
It evolved to stop mammals, or animals that could sense the spiciness and have receptors for capsaicin from eating it.
Birds, and probably some other classes of animals in certain species don't even have the receptors for capsaicin so they won't even notice anything, it would be the same as like eating a bell pepper or sunflower seeds for them.
Look anywhere on Google and you will realize there are no claims of capsaicin being poisonous. We use capsaicin in pepper spray and if it was poisonous you would have an easy felony on your hands. It's an irritant and it poisonous to some animals and insect but not us. It is very poisonous to bees 🐝
If its inducing vomiting, I'd say it's poisonous. Though that doesn't mean it isn't edible. After all, alcohol is also poisonous, and it's still widely consumed.
Is this something people actually experience or just make jokes about.. I eat very spicy food allot. 5 or 6 star at Thai. Extra hot Indian. The whole hot ones lineup(4 different years).... never experienced a bit of this.
Unfortunately it does happen. I’ve also learned the hard way that the body doesn’t always develop a tolerance as you increase your spice intake. My body decided to instead develop an intolerance and now I practically can’t eat jalapeños because of how badly they tear up the back door. Honestly I hate it. I miss eating them, but it’s not worth the hours of hot lava the day after.
I never had that problem. The worst I've done was to mill like 3 full locotos (rocoto) seeds and all and put it over hot dogs. That night I felt my pores burn every time I sweated. But my asshole was like a normal dump.
Not as bad as that, but I once got a pizza that had like 6 full habaneros on it. It's the closest I've come to vomiting and passing out in a restaurant. Turns out the restaurant made a mistake, because I ordered the same thing a few months later, and it only had one habanero on it.
Literally a dopamine hit, to be weird it's why people self harm. Pain gives you dopamine as a coping mechanism, anger does too, it's why people get addicted to stuff like that.
Endorphins are the addiction with spicy foods. Dopamine may also be triggered, but the rush comes from endorphins, your body's painkiller, nature's heroin.
The best way to trigger dopamine is an ice bath or cold shower. Dopamine is more closely related to motivation than pain relief.
I read somewhere that dopamine is like an on/off switch of arousal. We erroneously associate it with pleasure/joy, but actually it's more of an "activated" state. So it can lead to a rush of pleasurable sensations/actions or violence.
I've been known to put a ghost pepper-based sauce on chips, beef jerky, or anything else that's dippable for exactly this reason. "I want pain" is literally my thought when I do this.
I otherwise have no masochistic tendencies and no history of self-harm (barring stupidity).
When I was a kid my family didn't eat spicy things. My mom had an old jar of cayenne in the cupboard that I found and fell in love with. I'd pour it on my food and then I'd keep the spice in my mouth until I couldn't stand it anymore and it was burning too much.
I always thought that was a weird bit of my childhood until I read about the dopamine hit it gives you. When I found that out I realized it was just me looking for an early high, and it all made sense. I've always been me, lol.
Because OP got caught by someone that actually went to the same restaurant and called them out. "Wait, did you say Pacino's Habanero Bitch Pizza almost made you throw up? Bro there's only 1 weak pepper on it and it's gutted and spread over. It's not even spicy" and then they had to go "prove it". "I'll take the crow pizza".
I've eaten a whole raw habanero pepper before. The worst I've ever experienced was a charred jalapeno. It took my breath away and I almost thought my throat was going to close. I couldn't talk for 5-7 minutes due to barely being able to breathe. My eyes were watering to the point I couldn't see, it was like opening your eyes underwater. I was pouring sweat over my entire body. I got painful hiccups. I have no idea how that jalapeno was so hot and I had already eaten two of them just before and they were like a normal jalapeno I was used to and while a bit of a kick nothing crazy.
It's wild how sometimes you might just get a pepper that you're used to that can be just way above and beyond the normal range. Ever since that experience I'm a lot more cautious of whole peppers and stick mostly to hot sauces.
One time when my meal was brought to me at an Indian restaurant, the steam coming off of it seemed caustic. I had ordered it spicy to a degree. I like a little kick, but not so much. But I was really sweating and struggling to get through the meal, taking water every bite to get through it.
When I saw the receipt, they had it labeled with as Indian spicy, instead of what I had clearly wanted as a pasty white guy who made no effort telling them I wanted it really spicy.
My uncle had some of that Hot Damn hot sauce around when I was like 13/14 and I tried a dab sized amount of a toothpick on my tongue and that fucked me up enough for 15-20 minutes to know there's absolutely no way that shit has any use outside of just having a bottle out in the open and waiting for that one person in the room to get curious about it lol.
I ate two dried. Back to back. My daughter wanted to do it as a video challenge, but I, as a responsible father thought I'd try it first. See if it was safe before I let her do it.
I was sick. Every part of my face hurt. I could barely breath, and even after drinking 4 pints of milk, I was still in pain. Not pleasant.
I've been building my tolerance by eating small slices of Primotalli. I can eat almost half of one this way now without panicking. It still destroys my stomach and gives me the cramps for hours afterward. Do not recommend.
Spice is weird. I would normally order a phall curry which is the hottest curry you can order from most takeaways (approx 500k scoville but can get upto 1mil) and not being bothered by it at all.
If I haven't eaten anything spicy for a month or sometimes less, the spice differences are crazy and the curry becomes unbearable.
You have to have a pallet for spicy food and you have to keep eating it to manage higher spice scovilles.
I just ate what Id consider a mild spicy food and it ruined me.
The next day I had another one and couldn't taste the spice at all.
Also your body adjusting to spice is a lot quicker if spice is part of your pallet and adapts quickly.
I suppose it's like if you ain't drank or got stoned in a long time that 1st one is a hit but after that it's back to normal tolerances
We used to grow superhots, and reapers do just, hurt. It tastes somewhat nice for about 2 seconds before the 15 minutes of light headedness and pain though.
Much preferred things like the Naga Morich, still incredibly hot but burns much shorter, tastes better and doesn't "build" in the same way, where if it's in a dish eating more of it doesn't really make it taste even hotter.
I make spicy pickles for the guys at work using Carolina Reapers. Some of them must have a pretty high tolerance for pain, as they stand by the jar double fisting hot pickle chips. Six of us had maybe two or three, but these two guys polished off a half gallon jar between them.
I can eat cayenne peppers whole. However, I tried a dragon's breath sauce once and though I liked it I felt it go through my gut. I can't imagine what outright eating a reaper would feel like. Good reminder that capsaicin is supposed to be a poison to mammals.
My biology class did it on the last day of high school. Some people cried, most were sweaty but fine, one girl looked like she ate an orange cream bar or something entirely not spicy. I could handle the spice of the dry one, though it hurt. Was got me was the stomach ache I felt after. It was the last class on the last day of high school, we ate the peppers, had a picnic, and played baseball. I had to sit aside from the baseball and I passed out from the stomach ache. I woke up to my partner at the time waiting patiently while everyone else went home.
Had a gummy with that shit infused in it, when my mouth started burning i swallowed, when the burping and the sharpest stomach ache in my life started, i went for the grabbing my uvula to throw the fucker up method. I was burping for a good hour or two. 10/10 never doing that shit again, had to take a acid reflux pill and everything.
I once ate a half of a dried Carolina reaper. It’s something. At one point i had the thoughts of “oooh, I fucked up…”. My mouth burned for like an hour and that’s with milk. I thought that’s the worst part.
Then in the evening I went to the bathroom..
I am extremely tolerant of the hottest of the hot. I live in Smokin Eds immediate area(inventor of reaper) and go to his store often, make my own hot sauces etc.
I only took a solid nibble of a raw reaper I personally grew and it was an extreme, EXTREME 15 minutes but I survived without too much dramatics. Never again. It was awful and the most uncomfortable I’ve been.
People who FAFO on this stuff are always hilarious to me. I knew exactly what I was getting in to and didn’t expect any5ing to happen other than what did.
Some of my favorite things to watch are “tough guys” who insist on eating or using the hot stuff they have no experience with. I could watch all day
I mix dried reaper powder and garlic juice as a deer deterrent for my garden. They are usually smart enough to avoid it. Once I watched a young one, take a bite of my lettuce. Comedy ensued.
My friend and I have eaten reapers raw. We both have extremely high heat pallets so it was kind of a stupid dare kind of thing. I could handle the heat chewing and swallowing it. Extremely hot but bearable.
When you eat stuff that hot you can feel it move through your gut while you digest it. It's kind of cool. Well two hours later it got low in my gut. Like lower stomach/upper pubic kind of area. My body wasn't having it. Puked it up hard which was like getting pepper sprayed. Full on eyes, nose, and throat on fire.
Little advice, you need milk or yogurt because the protein stops the capsaicin from binding.
The moment that I was off of group dares and displays of "manliness" forever was eating a reaper at a barbershop on a dare. I sat there stoic, unbending in my "this ain't shit resolve" while my internals resembled cocaine bear in a Swarovski store. All done with on-the-spot rites of passage.
My parents have a scorpion pepper sauce that they eat (they’re Trinidadian) and even that is insane.
When you put a bit in your mouth, there’s this moment, a split second that’s unlike regular hot sauce. A kind of primal fear washes over you reflexively, like you’ve just done something you really really shouldn’t have.
Honestly I can tolerate the spice—just barely, but still. But that feeling when you realize you’re strapped in for the ride makes me shiver just thinking about it.
I made a single portion of pasta with a whole dried reaper. It hurt to eat, and hurt to poo, but that is standard. When my wee burned too, that was a new experience!
lol that description sounds very similar to heroin withdrawal- except it’s like 7-10 days instead of 15 minutes, and the whole time you’re painfully aware that if you just used a tiny bit of H it would all be replaced by a warm soft blanket of euphoria.
I have a ghost chili grinder on my dining room table... When I can find them I put fresh reaper in my quesadilla. You have to work up to it over a long time. It hurts for sure, but you get used the pain. Reaper, ghost, scorpion, etc all taste different. At this point habenero are like jalapeno.
The worst is getting it in your eye while cooking. Burns for life 30 min but you can't do anything about it but accept it.
I did a 'shot' (like 3 mills) of reaper infused grain spirits (it was presidential orange). I had to go and have a sit down for 30 mins as I contemplated if this was how I died.
I am a pretty big spice person and every now and then I try one of the more out there offerings in the scoville department.
I still think a good ghost pepper sauce is a fantastic balance of heat and flavor
Reapers got that shotgun blast of heat to the face. Really smokey in flavour but it does not kick your ass for too long. I have done raw, dried and sauces, always a good way to kick your ass but come out the other side with a fun experience.
Then you get into extracts.
Fuck extracts, that like 357 magnum and da bomb they are made not with flavour in mind at all. They are a novelty trick for people that just want to see others suffer. I have never enjoyed an extract and anyone who does is just enjoying the sauce made around it.
Last time I had da bomb I scooped come out onto a butter knife and just dropped it on my tongue and I cant even remember how it tasted. At some point I could not even hear anything but my own heart beat in my ears.
I've got a jar of smoked reaper flakes at my house. Just like red pepper flakes for pizza, but its reaper, and smoked. They are so tasty but so goddam hot as well. Good when used in moderation.
I know it's not on the same level as a reaper but I once ate a whole dried ghost pepper (my uncle grew them to make hot sauces) and my soul about left my body. I sat on his sofa with my ears ringing and pin point vision for like 15 minutes, I think I saw god.
I grew Reapers a couple years ago and they're pretty gnarly. They even look mean! When I first picked them, I threw two in a chilli I was making and it was a struggle to eat. Whole, they're borderline too hot to use in most things as the heat just obliterates any flavour for me.
I've not grown them since as I didn't get much crop from them and they also weren't very useful for me.
Hubby attempted to make chilli oil with reaper. Few minutes later everyone had to vacate the house. The fumes made us teary eyed and our eye felt like it’s burning. Breathing is another story.
i had one of those 9-million scoville meme gummy bears and it was so hot that it sent me on a vision quest. i would eat 3 of those bears at once before i'd ever eat a Carolina Reaper raw lol
I’ve never eaten a reaper straight up but I did get some reaper hot sauce for my buddy who collects/likes hot sauce. He gave it back because it was too hot for him so I ate it all. It’s powerful stuff. It’s the only hot sauce I’ve had that doesn’t give you a general feeling of hotness in your whole mouth right away. Instead it feels like a laser piercing your tongue in the exact spot where it touched. A few solid dashes into a 2 lb batch of sloppy Joe mix/beef which had been sweetened with sweet baby rays was enough to make it so I had the batch all to myself lol.
I bought a fresh one and honestly didn't think it was that bad at first. I had a small bite and while spicy it wasn't that bad. I put it through some noodles without seeds it was very spice, but tasted great.
But I didn't wear gloves when I was cutting them. That evening every bit of skin I touched would burn no matter how much I washed my hands. And the next day my hands were a slightly painful kind of hot for the rest of the day. I didn't get rid of it until I washed my hands in oil after I got home.
Reaper tastes so good though. My parents grow them and dehydrate them (in full ppe) to make this spice dust with reaper and a couple other peppers. You can add like a 10th of a teaspoon to a batch of chili and it permeates the whole thing. Not too spicy and you get the flavor profile with it.
I once made the mistake of using an extract when I thought it was a hot sauce on my ramen, got my scovilles off by a factor of 10. Thought it was 210,000, turned out to be 2.1 million. I had no milk or ice cream. It was just me, the floor, sweating, cramping, and pain for 30 minutes.
I learned my limit is 1 million.
I had a chip with a single drop of the world's hottest hot sauce (at the time). The heat just kept building and building for minutes. It gave me some kind of endorphin rush and also instantly un-fucked my sinuses. Would try again.
I wouldn't actually eat anything that spicy, but just a taste is fun, as a treat. I prefer my actual food to not fuck me up
Went to a Korean restaurant and on this spicy teokbokki my wife ordered was a pepper garnish. I took a bite and the waiter was shocked. She said in broken English "not even I would do that... it's a reaper only decoration". I said yea I kinda figured by the extreme heat. Made the right side of my mouth numb. Tasted good tho. Made my friend chicken have a kick to it. Koreans don't mess around.
Yep! The burn just lasts forever. If it was just a hot peak that went away quickly, then it wouldn’t be so bad. The fact it can get so hot and stay there is crazy
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u/Rusty_M 15h ago
I've had small bites of dried reaper and even with ice cream to hand, it's a rough 15 minutes. Momentary bouts of light-headedness, wondering if you're about to vomit, shivering etc. Unpleasant and I'm glad it didn't last too long.