Hot Sauce for the Insane - Pyramid of Pain

If you find yourself one dark and ghostly day standing in a store seriously considering the purchase of products that go by the names like "Satan's Blood", "Alien Anal Probe", "Pure Death", "Colon Blow" or "Acid Rain" then you have either lost your mine or you are one of those pain perverts (PPs).  What's a pain pervert you ask?  It's those few unfortunate souls who crave hot sauce and the pain that goes with it that borders on sadistic.

Let's put this perspective.  The heat factor of chili peppers is measured in Scoville units.  A index created by Wilbur Scoville in 1912.  The ingredient in peppers that determines the heat is their capsaicin (cay-say-ah-sin) which is generally the whitish membrane in the pepper and not the actual outer flesh.

Let's take this journey of ever-increasing pain as we climb the great pyramid of pain.

First let it be said very clearly.  For those who prefer ground in a can black pepper to freshly ground because the latter is "too hot" read the rest of this post for entertainment only.  You're still on the ground and really not allowed to touch the pain pyramid.

Fancy yourself a potential pain pervert because you can swallow a couple jalapenos (2,500 to 8,000 Scoville units) without dousing it in a margarita before the black pepper ladled chicken fajitas are delivered to your table?  Take the first step. Maybe as a professor of pepper you realize that the true evidence of your pain tolerance is the Serrano peppers (8,000 to 22,000 Scoville units) you occasionally cook with.  Now you're clearly off the ground.  Of course your Cajun neighbor will very proudly challenge your man-hood as he adds "heat" to his gumbo and boudin with cayenne (30,000 to 50,000 Scoville units).  Nice view on the pyramid.  Looking down on quite a few more normal folks.

Tell all your buddies to adjust their girdles and stand aside while one of PPs come in munching on habanero peppers (325,000 to 575,000 Scoville units). Yes, 10 times what you've ever experienced!  Imagine the effort it took to keep that food down.  Imagine the sweat on your head and the numbness in your mouth.  Imagine how you could think of nothing else for what felt like an eternity while the pain recked havoc on your entire digestive path.  From this view you can almost see the summit.  Maybe your sense of superiority is the only sense you still have left.  Now think of habanero guy and realize this: It's not enough.

Grown in a secluded area of India only known by members of NATO and the Vatican with Super Top Secret clearance, there is a pepper so hot that the dust blown from this area creates a kill zone of a 4-mile radius.  What is this pepper?  Depending on your level of botanical education you know it as Naga Jolokia or Ghost Pepper with a 800,000 to 1,000,000 Scoville Units. Your hand can touch the summit.  If life was fair it would be you actually standing on the summit. But wait there's more.

Ghost Peppers is as bad as it gets naturally.  For some reason some of the PPs don't find this enough.  As they race to experience more and more pain before their entire internal organs breakdown like a forest in the path of a volcanic eruption, they seek something decidedly unnatural.  Unnatural and unholy.  They're called extracts and can exhibit heat levels above 7,000,000 Scoville units. One day these pharmaceutical abominations will be declared illegal when the government finally decides they really do have to legislate stupidity.

So there's the entire pyramid of pain.  In future post, we'll explore where you can some of these really unique products.