I only started eating spicy food regularly maybe 10 years ago (starting with spicy noodles, actually), and at first it was a harrowing experience. Now, I’m much more tolerant to it and things that were at first inedible don’t taste particularly hot at all anymore. My wife got me a variety of dried chili flakes for Christmas which include Trinidad scorpion and Carolina reaper and they’re certainly hot, but tolerable. I think they’d have about killed me 5-10 years ago.

We have a local wings place that has a wing sauce they simply call ‘Diablo’, and every time I order it I’m sitting here crying while I eat them thinking, “Why do I keep doing this to myself?”, but after they’re gone I just want more. It’s weirdly addictive.