I did a thing… I’ve been growing weapons—I mean ultra-hot peppers. Two varieties are named and ready for post-harvest distribution, and they’re not for the faint of heart.
Unlimited Power: The Ghost Pepper Experience
Don’t underestimate the power of the dark side. It just about sums up what happens the first time you try these peppers.
The experience is:
- Intense
- Shocking
- Overwhelming
The Scorpion’s Sting: A Journey to the Dark Side
After mastering the Ghost peppers (Bhut Jolokia) at their formidable 1 million+ Scoville units, we ventured further into the dark side with the Trinidad Scorpion—a pepper 50% hotter at over 1.5 million Scoville Heat Units.
What follows is my personal journey into pepper-induced madness…
Thermal Detonator
A short poem
Solid flavor lands on my tongue as a chunk.
I feel the initial weight of heat, like a warm lead ball that’s left a small indent.
I shift the piece back, bite down and note it’s chewy as it sticks to my molars.
The tip of my tongue finds it again and starts to burn with purpose.
I’ve felt this before.
Should pass pretty soon.
Not so bad…
Too late to think twice, I’ve swallowed it.
Then it detonates.
A full fledged explosion,
expanding faster than I can process.
Mouth blown apart.
Ears begin to ring.
I salivate so profusely that I imagine I feel my teeth bleeding.
Equilibrium shaken.
Everything from my lips to my throat is simultaneously wet and engulfed in flames.
Have I swallowed burning fuel?
Can I swallow?
How can it be this much?
I have vertigo.
A massive storm of acute discomfort swarms,
striking all my senses in undulating shockwaves as the pain and disorientation intensify.
More.
And MORE
AND MORE
Relentless. It keeps coming. Pain increasing.
I attempt to assess my position — stunned and slackened.
Holding myself upright and planted in my chair,
both hands on the table beside my plate, head down in a combination of perseverance and submission.
Hanging on.
It has to stabilize eventually — but it doesn’t.
It’s still happening.
It’s expanding.
Exceeding my capacity to process how much it hurts.
The sensations that have completely taken over my body and senses from neck up spread in all directions, filling the vessel that was me.
I feel a white hot metal rod searing its way through my digestive tract.
I trace the pain – It’s linear, sharp, jagged and hot.
Impaled from within by shrapnel as it progresses deeper into my body, retaining heat.
Incendiary brightness seeps out. I see it vividly in my mind.
I watch this happen to someone else, I see me in the chair, glowing.
Ejected from myself I’m now an observer, the pain a passive fact, ambient like humidity. It’s mine but I’m no longer with it. I feel it cascading, radiating throughout the scene. Permeating.
My senses grab at my thoughts…
Undulating. Injecting questions as the procedural mind clings to panic.
Am I bleeding?
Why am I wet?
Is this my face? My eyes water, my nose runs .
Recognition and pain.
Ah.
I drift away again.
Physical checklists and warning lights blinking on some mental self preservation dashboard like incessant chatter are drowned out by waves of detachment as I lift off.
Maybe I’m still seated but I feel as though I’m floating.
Rotating backwards as if on a spindle.
Elation and agony a swirling orbit around the man in his chair.
I am in a gelatinous state of shock punctuated with slivers of clarity and a desire to speak, to warn or cry out.
Unable to articulate the developing sensations to my dinner companions, unable to complete sentences, I gesture to the others in an abrupt and inelegant seizure of compressed movements and sounds.
I grunt. Huf.
I don’t know what it is I attempt to say.
I’m flailing.
I find my breath — conscious only of breathing slowly for a moment. I follow a rhythm that marches me back to a recognizable place at the table.
I am still seated, more or less upright.
Some unknown amount of time has passed while I have been away.
The pain is now a blanket, a pulsing and tender inflammation that has diminished to a low, full body smolder — a flicker of discomfort the metronome keeping time with my pulse.
I feel as though I’ve been given a drug to counter the pain.
What hurts seems unincorporated – everywhere – a fixture of the habitat that is my body.
My head is feels swollen… far away from my mind.
Sounds are deadened without resonance, they disappear before I can process them as conversation.
Thoughts are unfocused and nebulous,
pierced by what streams into my eyes when they open.
I see everyone.
I’m still here.
Everything is so bright.
Close them.
Close them.
Am I thinking? These are thoughts.
Are they talking to me?
A vapor of quiet agony and mounting delight surrounds me.
It bubbles up through my chest, tingling its way out through my skull. Effervescent.
I feel my face is smiling.
Evaporation.
Euphoria.
The tingle of free-fall.
In the saturation of despondent fearlessness,
bathed in a cooling fog.
— Yes, that’s the feeling.*
The Verdict
The closest real-life analog to eating a Trinidad Scorpion? Being in the ICU on IV Dilaudid after a lacerated spleen.
But here’s the twist: Unlike life-threatening accidents, this unique, mind-expanding orchestration of extremes can be experienced without injury, medical insurance, or even a medical facility—right at your own kitchen table!
How’s that for a sales pitch?
Stay tuned for the official art and pepper specifications for our “Thermal Detonator” variety…
Stay Spicy (but maybe not THIS spicy),
Alex
Firecracker Farm