Pepper X – Seriously, Just Don’t

Pepper X – by Liam Sweeny.

I like hot food. But I’m a normal person. Sort of. I like hot food that I can enjoy. No, I don’t think mayonnaise is spicy or tangy, but I tend to stop, in my casual eating, with jalapeno. I know, Ooooo. But I just like a little zip. Give me some Frank’s Red Hot, and I’m alright. And I do put that sh*t on everything.

But I love the concept of super hot stuff, especially new peppers. So it does my heart(burn) good to see that Ed Currie of PuckerButt, and creator of the world’s hottest pepper, Carolina Reapers, has come up with a new, much hotter pepper, called Pepper X. Guinness World’s Record, in fact.

So to understand this stuff, hot peppers have a chemical called Capcasin. You’d have to eat a ton of it straight for it to hurt you, pounds. But your body sees it as a threat, like a false positive, and that’s why you feel the burn. And the hotness is measured in something called Scoville Heat Units. My beloved jalapenos are about 5,000 Scovilles. Habaneros are about 100,000. Police pepper spray? About 1.6 million Scovilles.

Carolina Reapers are 1.64 Scoville. So if you want to experience Carolina Reapers and don’t have any, just buy some police pepper spray and drink that.

Pepper X? About 2.69 million Scovilles. To compare this, bear spray is about 2.2 million Scovilles. So drink up.

Ed Currie did, of course, eat a Pepper X. He said about three and a half hours of brutal heat, followed by an hour and a half of debilitating stomach cramps.

Funny thing here is that Ed Currie thinks pepper challenges are stupid. That’s where people buy his peppers and eat them on YouTube or TikTok and let them watch the world cry. Really, the peppers release epinephrine and dopamine, and in his own life, was a natural high that was a go-to after substance abuse.

Don’t look for pepper seeds anytime soon. He let the Reapers get out there, and people just stole his world. Now he wants to make money off his hard work. Can’t blame him.

More by Liam Sweeny.