First date:
My relationship with the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion began with the tiniest slice from the very tip, the size of a grain of sand. I felt the heat and know it was hot, having just eaten a teaspoon of diced Ghost pepper, it was not the overwhelming dominance I had expected. I set the Scorpion pepper aside and decided I’d had enough for the day and would save it for another time.
All the way:
That special time came a week later – the Scorpion had air dried and looked like a dried strawberry from a fancy granola… It was fairly small and pliable in dried form… a bit darker than before. I cut off a chunk about the size of a raisin and noted the texture and weight reminded me again of dried fruit, specifically dried apple as I pressed it between my fingertips.
Remembering that I had acknowledged the heat from the little particle I tasted last week and my impression had been “it’s hot but not mind blowing” after the Ghost pepper, I proceeded without much trepidation and popped it in my mouth.
We all make mistakes.
It took me a day to come to terms with what had happened and articulate the magnitude of the experience.
Recounting the trip:
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.
———————————- FIN ——————————–
The closest analog to the feelings I had eating a chunk of Trinidad Scorpion for the first time was being in the ICU with a lacerated spleen on IV hydromorphone
This bears repeating: The last and only other time I have had intense pain paired with a euphoric calm overlay of disorientation and pleasure was in the ICU after a car crash where I had been given IV painkillers.
Unlike life threatening accidents, this unique, mind expanding orchestration of extremes can be experienced without injury, medical insurance or even a medical facility at your own kitchen table!
Nothing that intense has ever happened again… probably because I’ve developed a tolerance or maybe it’s because I’m just more careful not to exceed my tolerance now…