A local fried chicken restaurant calls their spiciest chicken WNFA (we're not fucking around), and it's exactly as it says on the tin. When I have enough of it and I've gotten past the initial "why am I doing this? this is stupid, I should stop," I genuinely experience a form of euphoria. The next day is sheer hell though, so I don't do it often. And that's how boring my life is, occasionally eating fried chicken to get mildly high.
I believe I have been to the same restaurant you're referring to, and honestly I believe that the WNFA chicken is likely to be a psychoactive substance. I've only had the barest bite of it, and it is enough to scar me mentally; and to eat an entire meal seems like it would be prone to mind-altering, just like how a stab wound is body altering.
Hyperbole aside, it is interesting to see the sheer breadth in tolerance across friends and family. I'm far from a spice masochist, but I've never shied away from heat since my teenage years. What I find more interesting is the amount of stereotypical spice and heat avoidance I've seen from white family and friends; an example of which I recently heard from a friend, “I don't add spice to my chili, since I know some people don't like that.”
I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food. Heat avoidance I can understand to an extent, some folks are more sensitive to heat and pain sensations than others. But spice avoidance even from your garden variety spices genuinely befuddles me; and I can not understand how some people do not come across using things like Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin in their cooking.
> I can not understand how some people do not come across using things like Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin in their cooking.
I'll explain it to you :)
I think a lot of people cook how their parents cook. I taught my mom how to better season her cooking, to great success, but I don't blame her for not ever really learning. She learned from my grandma who spent her life on a tiny farm in the prairies, I'd be surprised if they came across cumin very often.
So, you grow up eating beef and vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper and homemade butter and eventually your palate doesn't really require the same stimulation and variety that people with access to more varied ingredients do. It's not that plain-eating-folks aren't aware there's more variety out there, but if they've spent their whole life _without_ those other options, it's just not something their body naturally want. As someone who appreciates music, it'd be easy for me to look down upon those with less developed palates, but to what end? People enjoy what they enjoy, I don't think there's any superiority to be had in liking basil just like there's no superiority to be had in liking djent.
>What I find more interesting is the amount of stereotypical spice and heat avoidance I've seen from white family and friends; an example of which I recently heard from a friend, “I don't add spice to my chili, since I know some people don't like that.”
>I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food.
I think there's a communication breakdown here. They're not saying they don't like flavorful food, they're saying they don't like spicy food. "Spicy" and "spice" are two different things, but are often used interchangeably by folk who aren't much into, or don't know much about, cooking. The comment your friend said should (I think, at least) be interpreted as, "I don't add spicy spices to my chili".
Now, I could be totally wrong, and you'll come back to confirm that your friend used absolutely no spices whatsoever, at which point... how does it even taste like chili? :)
EDIT: Cute anecdote; I have to use the word "seasoning" whenever cooking with my two year-old. If I say "spice", she immediately assumes it's gonna be "spicy" and begins to flip out lol.
Chili oil is like setting a 15 minute timer for me. Ten minutes in, my gut starts making terrible noise, and five minutes later, there's no chili oil in my system anymore.
Tastes delicious! But I learned a long time ago that it's an ingredient I need to avoid whenever I'm eating while on the run. Err, on the go.
On the flip side, I never understood the "coffee makes you poop" meme, but it's apparently a similar biological reality for a lot of people.
> I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food
It's not a flavour, it's just pain. You can experience capsaicin on any mucuous membrane of your body. Your tongue and lips just happen to usually be the most convenient ones, but you're not using your taste buds on capsaicin.
Nothing wrong with enjoying painful food. I like exciting my pain neurons too. But not everyone likes pain, while far more people enjoy flavour.
I learned the hard way about the possibility space of spice perception. Covid killed my ability to tolerate spice. I used to eat spicy wings with abandon but now something as pedestrian as a fast food spicy chicken sandwich requires additional beverages to be tolerable.
I wondered this the first and only time I had a burrito at Chipotle. Turns out for all the years before that chain existed, Americans were just putting up with flavorful Mexican-American options, when what they really preferred was the most flavorless version possible.
It really depends on your raw material. If it is high quality & tasty then no spices are needed. You get a fresh bronzini from the Mediterranean, you don’t want to ruin it. You grill it, add just some olive oil, oregano and lemon and that’s it. Same for a grilled wagyu beef steak, a bit of salt and maybe some black pepper.
Now if you give me a piece of chicken, of course I will need a ton of spices to make it edible. Indians and the American south have found the best in my opinion (curry and cajun ftw).
If you want to experience a pepper rush with minimal topical pain and maximum enjoyment, buy/grow some fresh Carolina reapers and let them soak in a bottle of vodka or tequila for a couple of days. You can actually taste the pepper beyond the heat and still get a nice endorphin rush when you take a shot of it. It's also great for spicy margaritas
When I get a really good spicy time going, I get a kind of tunnel vision and feel like I'm in an altered state. Space and time seem different.
I used to think I had no limits until I ate a Carolina Reaper whole. The pain in my mouth was tolerable, but it caused a stomach pain that felt like my gallbladder had returned, lasting for one absolutely hellish hour.
Yes sir! Good food makes you cry and weep. It is not mere nourishment but an experience dividing the mind and the senses. A test(taste) of your will. A committment to live now and today because tomorrow the ass will be decimated.
Good fried chicken is like a narcotic, it can just knock you out. The Boondocks have an episode about it called "The Itis" and the effect is very real.
Following extra spicy foods with a pint or two of milk neutralizes the post pyrotechnics, for me. If lactose intolerant, sugar works, but not as well(Perhaps in large/unhealthy quantity?). YMMV.
Edit: I always presumed the high after spicy food was endorphins.
Basically, as I understand it, capsaicin can be psychoactive in the same sense that, for example, running or BDSM can be psychoactive: an endorphin rush which can cause a feeling of euphoria.
The milk helps some, but in my experience on absolutely can blow past that point so that the next day you're getting the same tingles from the other end.
I've had one experience with smelling a bowl that had some mexican style dish with habaneros over it. Just the smell made me salivate so much I could feel it in the back of my mouth as a pleasurable anticipation.
Dave's Hot Chicken in SoCal uses carolina reapers to spice their most spicy fried chicken. I really couldn't finish more than 1/3 of it. I've no idea how people eat this and remain unhurt.
dave's doesn't seem to do so any longer, but makes you sign a "waiver" for the hottest spice levels now even though they've toned it down quite a bit at this point. howlin' rays (which dave's copied) still uses carolina reapers and is no joke with it's howlin' spice level.
I grew up in a family that ate spicy food on a regular basis. So much so that we had one case where the waiter, seeing children at the table, advised us against taking what we wanted, namely a pizza named "diablo".
I watched him as he waited to intervene a few steps from us, platter in hand. Eventually he gave up.
In any case my experience, after 30 years of eating spicy food, is that I apparently don't feel the usual effects people who like spicy food do.
What happens instead is that the spice forces me to eat slower and thus get more flavour out of the dish. After all, "spicy" is technically not a flavour, so it mixes well with just about anything.
I did have a period of gradually increasing the dose, though, at the end of which I discovered that capsaicin is also excreted through urine. It is not a pleasant experience.
Capsaicin receptors also get “used up” over periods of long exposure, so you become less sensitive to the sensation. It sounds like you’ve been exposed to it your whole life, so have simply adjusted to it.
If you abstained for an extended period of time (6 months?) that Diablo pizza would probably blow your head off.
I've noticed ie in India that long time exposure severely numbs all your taste buds, so folks end up over-salting, over-sweetening etc. which definitely goes in bad direction re long term health. Or one can accept that non-spicy foods taste very bland, which is rather sad world TBH.
Many ie french are like this, they politely refuse going extreme re chilli, but once you get to fine tastes of that cuisine that would be completely gone you understand them. And join them, even as Indian/curry food lover
>What happens instead is that the spice forces me to eat slower
Thats interesting. It is the opposite for me. When I get hit by spicy/hot I start shoveling more and more food into my mouth to lessen the hurt. Somehow I find air hitting insides of my mouth after some super-spicy food more painful than more of the same spicy food :p. I couldn't figure it out.
I find that food tastes bland without spice. I carry around capsicum powder for when eating out in case they don't take spice sincerely enough. Edit: handling ghost peppers easefully is my current tolerance level.
Someone attempted to argue with me that vanilla ice cream is "spicy" because vanilla is a spice. While pedantically true, that's not a person I'd ever want to eat dinner with.
I've found this distinction to be dialect-dependent. That is Indians tend to make a sharp distinction between spicy and hot, and Americans tend to treat spicy and hot as synonyms.
Spicy, as in "using chili peppers," meaning it has capsaicin gives a bit of a lie to this. You literally just add capsaicin to food to make it spicy in many places. Is how they can give a number score to how spicy to make it. Leaving out the capsaicin does not change the base flavor profile at all.
Now, it is confusing, as spiced food is typically not spiced with capsaicin. Rather, spiced food has traditional spices and is often not spicy. (Think spiced rum. Not "hot" at all.)
One of the most stupid and authoritarian laws to exist. Although, you don't hear of 13-year-olds doing random chemicals bought for a tenner from headshops and dying anymore. They're just sold as the more popular drugs.
The war on drugs is going about as well as Russia's war on Ukraine.
I personally support the legalisation of psychedelics so it's not a law I support, but I've always found it a very clear and fair piece of legislation, if one accepts that the government legislates within a certain framework of precedent.
If we take a look at countries like Germany or the Netherlands we see a cat and mouse game where each parliament outlaws the latest psychedelics and then the psychedelic community unveils their new analogue or precursor. We can mark the years by small additions to the basic LSD molecule. We've gone from 1p-LSD and 1cp-LSD to 1V-LSD and now onto 1B-LSD. The stimulants and dissociatives communies seems to favour flouride, it's easy to and doesn't bind to much.
The UK law bans anything sold primarily for inducing psychotropic effects, while the scheduled substances sections at the end add very fair provisions for items commonly sold as food. That's why it's actually an exaggeration to say the law could affect the spicy food trade, as food trades are one of the explicit exemptions.
That link says nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, medicines, and anything that is a food is exempt. That would seem to include capsaicin, along with other stuff like Robitussin and nutmeg that can potentially be hallucinogenic if you megadose them.
“prohibited ingredient”, in relation to a substance, means any psychoactive substance—
(a) which is not naturally occurring in the substance, and
(b) the use of which in or on food is not authorised by an EU instrument.
So it sounds like Capsaicin produced naturally in things like hot peppers would be fine. But artificially produced Capsaicin added to food might not be.
Robitussin (dextromethorphan) is now a prescription in several countries for its abuse potential, like codeine. It is a dissociative hallucinogen that can be abused, but it is generally considered a poor substitute to other substances like ketamine, rarely a first choice.
Nutmeg is a deliriant on really high doses, and most deliriants are not controlled substances, though they may be classified as poisons. The reason is that tripping on deliriants is generally considered unpleasant, and enough to turn people off quickly.
You can make the argument for basically anything to be psychoactive then:
* good food
* alternating hyperventilation/slow breathing
* sex
* social interaction
* nervous breakdowns
We set up boundaries around what is "psychoactive" (like how some people do not consider alcohol to be a drug, or somehow different from other drugs), but fundamentally it's not like the brain isn't constantly drugging itself anyway. If your brain is not changing at all, how do you even experience something?
I have a similar difficulty with the definition of "drug" itself, which is "a substance that has a physiological effect when introduced to the body". Literally anything that participates in physics is a "drug".
Brassica plants, taste and smell, make me physically nauseous. I theorize that this is a genetic disposition.
Asparagus makes your urine smell of fresh mown grass, except that mine doesn't, and I cannot detect that odour in another person's urine after they have ate asparagus. We... uh... ran some experiments to determine this. I theorized for a few years that this was a genetic thing, and sure enough, research published recently (in the past three years) bears this out.
My wife thinks that cilantro tastes of soap. And I theorized this is a genetic disposition. Research in the past few years bears this out. But cilantro to me, is a mild hallucinogenic and also a skin irritant. Which I theorized was a genetic response. And sure enough, in the past few years, research indicates that cilantro on certain people can act as an hallucinogenic. I have gained an appreciation for Mexican food more so of late.
Here, we present the results of a genome-wide association study among 14,604 participants of European ancestry who reported whether cilantro tasted soapy, with replication in a distinct set of 11,851 participants who declared whether they liked cilantro. We find a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) significantly associated with soapy-taste detection that is confirmed in the cilantro preference group. This SNP, rs72921001 (p = 6.4 × 10−9, odds ratio 0.81 per A allele), lies within a cluster of olfactory receptor genes on chromosome 11. Among these olfactory receptor genes is OR6A2, which has a high binding specificity for several of the aldehydes that give cilantro its characteristic odor. We also estimate the heritability of cilantro soapy-taste detection in our cohort, showing that the heritability tagged by common SNPs is low, about 0.087.
What was interesting is that, until I was dating my future wife, in 2008, I didn't know of anyone who thought that cilantro tasted like soap. A friend several years before mentioned that some people find that cilantro tastes of soap. As I was aware of my reaction to cilantro from years earlier, and then meeting my future wife who thinks cilantro tastes soapy, like all good science I was like "huh, that's odd, based on these two polar opposite reactions I wonder if there is a genetic component to it." And I did some digging, and signed up to answer some questions and do a blood test, and a few years later, there was a study published. My wife is from Indiana, 2nd generation immigrant, of Italian descent. I am Welsh whose ancestry in that country goes back at least 12 generations with no outside mixing, or so I am told.
Not to belittle you or anything but have we not known all of that for a lot longer than a few years? I remember as a child 25+ years ago being told about the cilantro and asparagus thing (being genetic). Although I suppose that could have just been common knowledge and not proven.
Yes, it has been noted for probably longer than I have been alive. It is only in the past decade they found the cause for this. Common knowledge, but not proven, as you say.
Cilantro contains thujone which is a neurotoxin, the same as found in absinthe. So I'm kinda like a dolphin using a puffer fish to get high. There are various studies in this compound, and others, and it is a controlled compound regulated by the EU.
I have independent verification by friends who are scientists and medical doctors at one gathering who have conducted observations that my pupils dilate, my eyes become bloodshot and, in the words of one observer, "I become more whoo-whoo. Whooo! Whoooooooo!" whatever that means. As my normal demeanour flips between "I don't want to be around people, you're all so tiring, I just want to be quiet" and a hyperactive Robin Williams amped up on caffeine and sugar, I am guessing I become even more "Whoooo! Whooooooooooooo! Let's par-tehhh!" I am probably over-compensating for something. The video recordings are cringeworthy.
We've done independent blind tests of "is this psychosomatic" or do I truly have a reaction. Multiple blind tests of a single subject (me) by multiple qualified observers over the course of several days do indeed bear out that I have an unintended reaction to cilantro, the oils from cilantro and the active ingredients in cilantro. Direct contact of the cilantro on my skin makes my skin itch and become red and bumpy. When I imbibe even small amounts of cilantro, no more than you would get in a standard serving with a meal, to me, it feels like I am drunk and whoozy for about 20 or so minutes before the effects pass. Again, to reiterate, I suspect my extreme reaction to cilantro is genetic and gives me a sensitivity and reaction that most of the population doesn't have, much like some of the population also detects cilantro tasting of soap. Though I suspect these are very different genetic markers.
Almost everything is genetic, so no surprises there. Cilantro has always tasted like soap to me. As a kid, I couldn't really even be in the same room with the herb. However, my wife frequently makes me eat it because she likes it. As a result of frequent exposure, I no longer find the taste offensive. I guess the point is this: there may be a genetic component to whether or not cilantro tastes like soap, but it may also be possible to learn to like the taste of soap.
I have had this reaction to cilantro as well. It was very fun and enjoyable. The odd thing is that it's only happened once, with freshly picked cilantro from my garden. I haven't been able to reproduce the effect, although I would like to. I didn't know about this feature of the plant, so thanks for posting.
> Then, while there is still some residual burning sensation remaining, the flush of endorphins gives this blissful, albeit a bit drunk, state (“Live is beautiful, I love you all, awesome…”).
Or, as they say in German, "es ist schön, wenn der Schmerz nachlässt" (it's great when the pain goes away). Then again, you also wouldn't intentionally hit your finger with a hammer to experience this feeling - so my approach to spicy food is "know your limit": I enjoy it in moderate amounts, but keep away from the kind of spicyness where after a few bites you feel like your mouth is on fire and you can't taste the food anymore...
I think there are two different states when the pain goes away - relief and euphory.
These can be mistaken occasionally - as in the Rabbi and the goat joke/parable. But in most cases, it is clear if a state would be desirable if there were no discomfort before. (As a side note, it is why I am skeptical about people praising the Kambo ceremony - taking a frog poison.)
Ad hammer - I mention that in another blog post (curious if you refer to this or if it is a nice coincidence). In any case, there is a difference if something is only a temporary discomfort or causes long-term harm. Instead of using a hammer, one can get spanked or (safely) flogged.
I learned a little jingle growing up that my mom passed down from her mother, and presumably some even older source, but I can't find it with a quick Google.
Your body can react to the pain excitation in some slightly harmful ways, such as diarrhea, overproduction of mucus, altered digestion, etc.
True, the capsaicin itself doesn't harm your body, but the pain can in itself cause some slight damage (and like any drug, an overdose of capsaicin can be very dangerous).
The combination of spicy and numbing that the Chinese call málà is particularly mind bending. The tingly numbing enhances the spice which enhances the tingly numbing. A proper Sichuan hot pot is practically a drug (and indeed in some cases people have been known to use poppy in the broth, at least according to Fuchsia Dunlop).
It plays hell on all of the mucous membranes it comes into contact with, stomach and intestines included. I'm not sure if it can give you an ulcer, but in my experience, if you've already got one, it can be debilitatingly painful.
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Hyperbole aside, it is interesting to see the sheer breadth in tolerance across friends and family. I'm far from a spice masochist, but I've never shied away from heat since my teenage years. What I find more interesting is the amount of stereotypical spice and heat avoidance I've seen from white family and friends; an example of which I recently heard from a friend, “I don't add spice to my chili, since I know some people don't like that.”
I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food. Heat avoidance I can understand to an extent, some folks are more sensitive to heat and pain sensations than others. But spice avoidance even from your garden variety spices genuinely befuddles me; and I can not understand how some people do not come across using things like Rosemary, Basil, or Cumin in their cooking.
I'll explain it to you :)
I think a lot of people cook how their parents cook. I taught my mom how to better season her cooking, to great success, but I don't blame her for not ever really learning. She learned from my grandma who spent her life on a tiny farm in the prairies, I'd be surprised if they came across cumin very often.
So, you grow up eating beef and vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper and homemade butter and eventually your palate doesn't really require the same stimulation and variety that people with access to more varied ingredients do. It's not that plain-eating-folks aren't aware there's more variety out there, but if they've spent their whole life _without_ those other options, it's just not something their body naturally want. As someone who appreciates music, it'd be easy for me to look down upon those with less developed palates, but to what end? People enjoy what they enjoy, I don't think there's any superiority to be had in liking basil just like there's no superiority to be had in liking djent.
>I'm genuinely confused by people who avoid adding additional flavour to their food.
I think there's a communication breakdown here. They're not saying they don't like flavorful food, they're saying they don't like spicy food. "Spicy" and "spice" are two different things, but are often used interchangeably by folk who aren't much into, or don't know much about, cooking. The comment your friend said should (I think, at least) be interpreted as, "I don't add spicy spices to my chili".
Now, I could be totally wrong, and you'll come back to confirm that your friend used absolutely no spices whatsoever, at which point... how does it even taste like chili? :)
EDIT: Cute anecdote; I have to use the word "seasoning" whenever cooking with my two year-old. If I say "spice", she immediately assumes it's gonna be "spicy" and begins to flip out lol.
Tastes delicious! But I learned a long time ago that it's an ingredient I need to avoid whenever I'm eating while on the run. Err, on the go.
On the flip side, I never understood the "coffee makes you poop" meme, but it's apparently a similar biological reality for a lot of people.
It's not a flavour, it's just pain. You can experience capsaicin on any mucuous membrane of your body. Your tongue and lips just happen to usually be the most convenient ones, but you're not using your taste buds on capsaicin.
Nothing wrong with enjoying painful food. I like exciting my pain neurons too. But not everyone likes pain, while far more people enjoy flavour.
Give them an ole "he who controls the spice, controls the universe!!"
Genetics? Who knows but they’re out there.
Either that or they think that food that tastes good is somehow bad/sinful or makes them feel out of control. Orthorexia is an example of this.
Now if you give me a piece of chicken, of course I will need a ton of spices to make it edible. Indians and the American south have found the best in my opinion (curry and cajun ftw).
I used to think I had no limits until I ate a Carolina Reaper whole. The pain in my mouth was tolerable, but it caused a stomach pain that felt like my gallbladder had returned, lasting for one absolutely hellish hour.
Checkout Mad Dog 357: https://maddog357.com/ it's the real deal.
Edit: I always presumed the high after spicy food was endorphins.
Deleted Comment
That was my assumption too.
I've had one experience with smelling a bowl that had some mexican style dish with habaneros over it. Just the smell made me salivate so much I could feel it in the back of my mouth as a pleasurable anticipation.
I watched him as he waited to intervene a few steps from us, platter in hand. Eventually he gave up.
In any case my experience, after 30 years of eating spicy food, is that I apparently don't feel the usual effects people who like spicy food do.
What happens instead is that the spice forces me to eat slower and thus get more flavour out of the dish. After all, "spicy" is technically not a flavour, so it mixes well with just about anything.
I did have a period of gradually increasing the dose, though, at the end of which I discovered that capsaicin is also excreted through urine. It is not a pleasant experience.
If you abstained for an extended period of time (6 months?) that Diablo pizza would probably blow your head off.
Many ie french are like this, they politely refuse going extreme re chilli, but once you get to fine tastes of that cuisine that would be completely gone you understand them. And join them, even as Indian/curry food lover
Thats interesting. It is the opposite for me. When I get hit by spicy/hot I start shoveling more and more food into my mouth to lessen the hurt. Somehow I find air hitting insides of my mouth after some super-spicy food more painful than more of the same spicy food :p. I couldn't figure it out.
Spicy IS the flavor, you're confusing Spicy food with Hot food.
Now, it is confusing, as spiced food is typically not spiced with capsaicin. Rather, spiced food has traditional spices and is often not spicy. (Think spiced rum. Not "hot" at all.)
This is why I get spicy alcoholic drinks.
The war on drugs is going about as well as Russia's war on Ukraine.
If we take a look at countries like Germany or the Netherlands we see a cat and mouse game where each parliament outlaws the latest psychedelics and then the psychedelic community unveils their new analogue or precursor. We can mark the years by small additions to the basic LSD molecule. We've gone from 1p-LSD and 1cp-LSD to 1V-LSD and now onto 1B-LSD. The stimulants and dissociatives communies seems to favour flouride, it's easy to and doesn't bind to much.
The UK law bans anything sold primarily for inducing psychotropic effects, while the scheduled substances sections at the end add very fair provisions for items commonly sold as food. That's why it's actually an exaggeration to say the law could affect the spicy food trade, as food trades are one of the explicit exemptions.
https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past...
Whether this is true or not, it's certainly enraging.
> Any substance which—
(a) is ordinarily consumed as food, and
(b) does not contain a prohibited ingredient
> In this paragraph—
“food” includes drink;
“prohibited ingredient”, in relation to a substance, means any psychoactive substance—
(a) which is not naturally occurring in the substance, and
(b) the use of which in or on food is not authorised by an EU instrument.
So it sounds like Capsaicin produced naturally in things like hot peppers would be fine. But artificially produced Capsaicin added to food might not be.
Nutmeg is a deliriant on really high doses, and most deliriants are not controlled substances, though they may be classified as poisons. The reason is that tripping on deliriants is generally considered unpleasant, and enough to turn people off quickly.
* good food
* alternating hyperventilation/slow breathing
* sex
* social interaction
* nervous breakdowns
We set up boundaries around what is "psychoactive" (like how some people do not consider alcohol to be a drug, or somehow different from other drugs), but fundamentally it's not like the brain isn't constantly drugging itself anyway. If your brain is not changing at all, how do you even experience something?
* putting your tongue on a battery
Yeah, it's a bizarre take
Asparagus makes your urine smell of fresh mown grass, except that mine doesn't, and I cannot detect that odour in another person's urine after they have ate asparagus. We... uh... ran some experiments to determine this. I theorized for a few years that this was a genetic thing, and sure enough, research published recently (in the past three years) bears this out.
My wife thinks that cilantro tastes of soap. And I theorized this is a genetic disposition. Research in the past few years bears this out. But cilantro to me, is a mild hallucinogenic and also a skin irritant. Which I theorized was a genetic response. And sure enough, in the past few years, research indicates that cilantro on certain people can act as an hallucinogenic. I have gained an appreciation for Mexican food more so of late.
Your theory is fact. https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/20...
Here, we present the results of a genome-wide association study among 14,604 participants of European ancestry who reported whether cilantro tasted soapy, with replication in a distinct set of 11,851 participants who declared whether they liked cilantro. We find a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) significantly associated with soapy-taste detection that is confirmed in the cilantro preference group. This SNP, rs72921001 (p = 6.4 × 10−9, odds ratio 0.81 per A allele), lies within a cluster of olfactory receptor genes on chromosome 11. Among these olfactory receptor genes is OR6A2, which has a high binding specificity for several of the aldehydes that give cilantro its characteristic odor. We also estimate the heritability of cilantro soapy-taste detection in our cohort, showing that the heritability tagged by common SNPs is low, about 0.087.
I've never heard of someone having this kind of reaction to cilantro and find it fascinating.
I have independent verification by friends who are scientists and medical doctors at one gathering who have conducted observations that my pupils dilate, my eyes become bloodshot and, in the words of one observer, "I become more whoo-whoo. Whooo! Whoooooooo!" whatever that means. As my normal demeanour flips between "I don't want to be around people, you're all so tiring, I just want to be quiet" and a hyperactive Robin Williams amped up on caffeine and sugar, I am guessing I become even more "Whoooo! Whooooooooooooo! Let's par-tehhh!" I am probably over-compensating for something. The video recordings are cringeworthy.
We've done independent blind tests of "is this psychosomatic" or do I truly have a reaction. Multiple blind tests of a single subject (me) by multiple qualified observers over the course of several days do indeed bear out that I have an unintended reaction to cilantro, the oils from cilantro and the active ingredients in cilantro. Direct contact of the cilantro on my skin makes my skin itch and become red and bumpy. When I imbibe even small amounts of cilantro, no more than you would get in a standard serving with a meal, to me, it feels like I am drunk and whoozy for about 20 or so minutes before the effects pass. Again, to reiterate, I suspect my extreme reaction to cilantro is genetic and gives me a sensitivity and reaction that most of the population doesn't have, much like some of the population also detects cilantro tasting of soap. Though I suspect these are very different genetic markers.
Or, as they say in German, "es ist schön, wenn der Schmerz nachlässt" (it's great when the pain goes away). Then again, you also wouldn't intentionally hit your finger with a hammer to experience this feeling - so my approach to spicy food is "know your limit": I enjoy it in moderate amounts, but keep away from the kind of spicyness where after a few bites you feel like your mouth is on fire and you can't taste the food anymore...
This actually sounds related to some of the reasoning behind "cutting" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm#Pathophysiology
These can be mistaken occasionally - as in the Rabbi and the goat joke/parable. But in most cases, it is clear if a state would be desirable if there were no discomfort before. (As a side note, it is why I am skeptical about people praising the Kambo ceremony - taking a frog poison.)
Ad hammer - I mention that in another blog post (curious if you refer to this or if it is a nice coincidence). In any case, there is a difference if something is only a temporary discomfort or causes long-term harm. Instead of using a hammer, one can get spanked or (safely) flogged.
> "I like to hit my head with a hammer,"
> Said Johnny one day to his pop.
> "The reason I like to do it," he said,
> "Is, it feels so good when I stop!"
True, the capsaicin itself doesn't harm your body, but the pain can in itself cause some slight damage (and like any drug, an overdose of capsaicin can be very dangerous).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxy-alpha-sanshool
To enjoy Capsaicin as a stimulant mix copious amounts of the powdered red pepper with honey. Taking it for a few days screws up my stomach though.