Day 347: Eat A Ghost Pepper

     The ghost pepper, also known as the Bhut Jolokia chili pepper (or one of the worst mistakes of my entire life), has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the hottest pepper in the world. It's over 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and I'm pretty sure that It's used as an instrument of torture in some areas of the world. I guess it's only fair that I squeeze a challenge like this into my project. I mean, what self pain inflicting project would be complete without an evening of 3rd degree heartburn and a morning of molten diarrhea? Oh and the vomiting, I mustn't forget about the vomiting. As far as I'm concerned, this one may just take the cake for worst challenge so far.

     Before I ate the pepper, I tried a seed to test the waters, and if it wasn't for Kevin and David's excellent peer pressuring skills, the challenge would have ended there. I felt the heat, and I wasn't looking forward to fully engulfing myself in it. Kevin offered to split the pepper in half with me which made me feel a little better, but not much. I wasn't ready to voluntarily put myself through that much pain and misery. And then after about a half hour of me siking myself up, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed my half of the pepper, and ate it. Kevin followed. I tried my best to get the pepper down my throat and away from my tongue as soon as possible, but it was clear that things weren't going to work that way. I felt a hint of what could have been Hell on the back of my tongue. Out of instinct, I started running to each end of Kevin's house. From the kitchen, to the front door and back, all I could do was pace. Each breath I took tasted like Summer in Arizona, and it was only getting worse. I downed glasses of water and shoveled handfuls of sugar to put out the fire but nothing seemed to help. Eventually, I found myself on Kevin's back deck, drooling uncontrollably. By then I could talk normally and even breathe a little, but things were far from good. Everything ached. My head hurt, my hands were clamy, I was covered with beads of sweat, and I felt like I had been sucking on a hair dryer. Everything sucked. Things weren't getting much better when I started puking either. So there you go. There's my Jackass tribute challenge. The one where I totally knew that all of this was coming my way and that it was all preventable. All I had to do was say the word, and I could have thought up a new challenge for me to try. But like I said, what good is a such an extensive project if I don't get to experience all sides of it. I want to experience the shittiest of the shit, and I think I did a pretty good job of that tonight.