Chillies Aren't Hot. You Are.

On Pain & Pleasure

It’s a funny thing to realise that you’re a masochist. Most people, I expect, keep it to themselves, perhaps finding covert ways to appease their desires with webcams and candles. What most people wouldn’t do, I expect, is write about it on the internet. But I am a masochist and I’m writing about it on the internet. Not the - Exclusive! Leaked Pics Of Tory Donor Getting Paddled By Leather Clad Mystery Woman! - kind of masochist. I’m a culinary masochist, and chilli is my mistress.

About once a month I take myself off to sit somewhere for an hour or so and get a good thrashing. I’m not too fussy about who or where: Thai, Ghanian, Indian, Sichuan, Hunan, they all do it for me. There is a precise and clear goal on these trips, to reach a certain state of enlightenment; the moment when your entire head begins to throb in 4 dimensions and your surroundings swirl in a kaleidoscope of colour and sound. I sit there, red faced, taking shallow open-mouthed in-breaths like a tantruming toddler in the silence between screams. In that moment you become acutely aware of every nerve ending in your body, you can suddenly feel the back of your eyeballs and the inside of your ears. It’s a truly visceral and meditative thing.

When you eat a chilli (chili for my American friends) a few things happen. Heat receptors in your skin are triggered, making your nervous system think that you’re overheating. This leads to a chain reaction of bodily functions as your cooling mechanisms kick into action. Your heart beats faster, your blood vessels dilate and you turn red as blood comes to the surface of your skin to pull heat away from the body. You begin to sweat profusely. Your eyes water and your nose runs as your mucus membranes go into overdrive. The cause of all this is a chemical called capsaicin (C₁₈H₂₇NO₃₎ which is present in hot chillies.

Here’s the real kicker though. The real coup de grâce. Chilli is playing you against yourself. That heat you feel when you eat a spicy chilli is actually your own body heat. Let me explain. Capsaicin binds to pain receptors on your tongue called TRVP1, and creates a burning sensation. But what’s actually happening here is that the capsaicin is lowering your tongue’s sensitivity to heat, and so your own body temperature feels hotter than normal, and creates that hot and spicy sensation. The more capsaicin you eat, the hotter your own body heat feels.

Different varieties of chilli contain different levels of capsaicin, and that’s what makes them more or less spicy. To measure the heat of chillies, scientists use something called the Scoville Scale. Down at the tame end you have chillies like Peperoncini and Poblano. They’re nothing. A glance across the bar. Jalapeño is when things start happening, your attention is piqued, it’s a wink, an eyebrow raise. Cayenne is an invitation, now you know you’re in for a good time.

The Bird’s Eye Chilli is the nipple clamp of the Scoville Scale, sharp, bright and precise. It’s painful, sure, but it’s not unbearable. To really reach the promised land you’ll have to go further. Scotch Bonnet and Habanero are where it really hurts, these are the whips and chains, the spiked spanker, this is when you reach the pleasure centre. Waves of alternating pain and ecstasy wash over you and your eyes roll back. You can go beyond this, it is possible, but there is a danger of upsetting the balance, the ratio of pleasure to pain. There are hotter chillies, like the Carolina Reaper, which you find in the ingredients list of hot sauces with names like Asshole Prolapser 2000, but they’re the result of human intervention by crossbreeding chilli plants and so nobody really cooks with them.

The heat you feel when you eat a spicy chilli is actually your own body heat.

Once you’ve finished eating you’ll enter the afterglow phase. Depending on the quantity and severity of the dish(es), this can last anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour. If, like me, you choose to do your most extreme spice eating outside of your own home then this usually means a serene bus journey home, spaced out, anaesthetised from the tongue down, wondering how something so wrong could possibly feel so right.