Those of you who've known me for more than a year might remember my Ghost Pepper stage. During this questionably dark and slightly sadistic time in my life, I frequently challenged myself and others to eat a Ghost Pepper. The experience proved to be a sort of bonding session so I've found crazy hot pepper eating to be a good way to get closer to people, particularly guys.
If you don't know already, hot peppers can be measured by the Scoville Scale of Heat. To give you some context to all of this, the Jalepeño is around 3,000 SU (Scoville Units), the Habenero is about 300,000 SU, and the Ghost is around 1,000,000 SU. Pretty crazy stuff, no doubt about it. It was always semi-painful, but never unbearable and almost recreational in a strange way, so I had the Ghost Pepper on around 7 different occasions.
The first week of this DTS has been absolutely amazing. I already feel pretty close to some of the people here, but there's also so many that I do not feel as tight with yet. So, I decided to order the some of the hottest peppers in the world: the Carolina Reaper. This pepper averages around 2,200,000 SU, and that's just the average, not even the peak. Considering the step up from Habenero to Ghost was more significant than this, I figured it couldn't be that much worse than what I've already grown so accustomed to. I was wrong.
We had this, and as you may see in the video (sorry for the poor quality, we just kept it simple and shot it on a GoPro), I very firmly profess this to be one of the worst experiences I've ever had. What the video doesn't show, however, is how almost all the guys who had significant amounts of the pepper with me suffered from the most severe stomach aches. Most of us actually threw it up, and those who attempted but failed to do so desperately wished their body would've allowed them to. I more strongly discourage the consumption of this pepper under any circumstances. If you're looking for some crazy, stupid fun, go eat a couple Ghost Peppers; the Reaper is not to be trifled with. Stay away, stay afraid. Very afraid.
(p.s. if you choose not to heed my warning and choose to do it anyway, DO NOT swallow the milk or any other dairy products you may consume to ease the pain. It will soothe your tongue, but the dairy reacts with the pepper in the stomach in such a way that causes severe aching and possibly vomiting. Swish the milk around your mouth, but then spit it out. To ease the pain in the stomach, take several Anti-Acid pills like Tums and/or Pepto-Bismol. And don't die.)