Well, lets say you should consider this a warning. Don't ever let anyone eat or handle peppers and then go down on you without them having a thorough visit to the sink first. Most painful thing I've ever experienced.

I ate a pepper in Laos that made me cry. Real, pain-induced tears, not just eye-watering. It was very small, about the size of my pinkie nail, and green. It ruined one evening.

I once made a hot pepper omelet and after chopping the peppers, I had to take a leak. I didn't clean my hands first. BIG mistake.

I used to work in a restaurant that had monthly hotsauce tastings. They included things like Dave's Insanity, which is much closer to pepper spray than jalapenos.
More than once, I've either touched my eye or gone to the bathroom without washing my hands (or thinking). It is bad. Bad, bad, bad.
Yet strangely arousing.

Heh. Dave's Insanity.

One night I stopped into this bar & grill joint out in the boondocks and ordered a plate of cajun shrimp with jalapeno mayonaisse for dipping. I asked for extra on the mayo.

"Ya like hot stuff, huh, kid?" (men of a certain age always call me "kid," even though I'm almost 35. I love this.)

"Yeah, why."

"Hey, Dave," he yelled at the kitchen door, "the kid likes hot stuff," and guffawed.

A biker-lookin' dude in a chef's toque came out with a tiny plastic sauce cup with a red smear at the bottom.

"Try this." he said.

I sneered at the smear. Then I wiped up a big dollop with a shrimp.

It was nothing at first. Then the sweat broke out and my epiglottis started spasming, and no matter how much beer I guzzled, I couldn't stop hiccuping for 45 minutes. Dag, that was hot.

I used to get food stuck in the space between my mouth and my nose all the time. I think I just have a very open system because I can always draw snot down really easily and other disgusting stuff.

Anyway, you know what burns most? Gummy bears. I have no idea why.

The first time I had sushi I had no idea what that big green lump was on my plate. So I picked it up with my chopsticks and ate the whole thing. I was in the sort of social situation where on can not just spit out the wasabi, scream, gag, or cry profusely, all of which I desperately desired at that moment. Stiff upper lip and all I swallowed my wasabi without comment, although my wine did disappear quickly. No one saw me eat it, and no one appeared to notice my strange expression when I realized what I was eating.

Wasabi was hot in quantity, but the worst was when a buddy and I foolishly told the waiter at a Thai restaurant we wanted our food, hot, really hot. After a few "are you sures" he left with his head shaking. We never did quite finish the curry, and we left sweating and hiccuping, but with quite the capsaicin buzz. Never challenge a Thai chef to make it too spicy.

[I agree with jonmc, Dave's Insanity is truly hot, use very carefully]

There's a place in Toronto called Salad King, which is a Thai restaurant. You order your "level of spiciness" via #s of chilis. So, you'd say 3 chili or 2 chili or whatever. 3 was considered hot. Most people did 2 or 1.5. I was working at a chi-chi travel company and went to lunch with the guy who did our Vietnamese tours. We go in and he orders his food with 13 chili. The cashier says "No" and he says, "No, really, it's okay." Cashier says okay.

We sit down and eat and by this time the whole restaurant seems to know what's going on and everyone's watching over. He eats his food like normal. No big gulps or water, nothing strange, no odd facial expressions. I was shocked. When he finished, the owner came over and congratulated him.

I went to an Indian place that actually would serve white guys food spiced to Indian levels. I asked for it hot, and did the little
"no really I mean hot!" verbal dancing that is always required. Food came and the waiter stood by the table waiting for me to take a bite, and then asked me what I thought. It wasn't that hot, and me being a dumbass I told him so. Whoop, away went that dish, and 5 minutes later it came back. Once again, the waiter stood by waiting to see what I thought. And the bite, and OH MY GOD THAT BURNS! PAIN! MOMMY! Of course I couldn't actually say that it was too damn hot so I had to let him know that it was just right, and then eat the whole damn curry. Every bite my lips hated me. It was torture. But I won.

There is a Tequila joint in San Francisco that does shots of
Habenero soaked tequila. It's free if you can keep down the shot, 7 dollars otherwise. If you can do 4 2oz shots in one sitting you get your name engraved on the bottle. That's some pretty damn spicy tequila, but it pales to that curry.

I have a bottle of hot sauce that is so blazing hot that one or two drops are about all you can use without the heat becoming overpowering...

I was making some bbq sauce and accidentally got about 2 tablespoons of it into the mixture, but figured it would cook off harmlessly.

The grill turned into a tear-gas canister. I wound up standing outside, spraying myself in the face with the garden hose, for relief.

I think we wound up ordering sushi.

Many years ago, I was watching football and eating some really spicy wings. I finish up, and wash my hands pretty thoroughly.

My ex-girlfriend and I start getting intimate a full 20-30 minutes later, and I start to play with her.

"your fingers... are burning me!"
"oh man, I'm so sorry"
"i kinda like it"

So I strongly advise that you either do or do not eat hot wings before sex. I'm not sure which.

that's like the whole dissolving cinnamon breath strip thing again
i wonder how many people have tried that
(not i, said the cat)

I took my wife to a Chinese restaurant many, many years ago. Ordered "kung pao beef". It was asterisked as a warning that the dish was "spicy", but fuck, I like spicy. So I happily bit into a big forkful, ignoring the little black peppers.

Wow, was that a mistake.

Three beers later, my lips finally began to regain any sort of feeling in them.

scotch bonnet
rubbed my eye
bad bad idea
it's called mace
but everyone loved the mole.

I love the hot and have never had anything so painful that it made for a good story.

Really hot stuff, though, makes my eyelids sweat.

I sneezed halfway through chewing a carrot once. Carrot shrapnel up the sinuses. Ow.

Two days later, I felt kind of congested and snorted to try to dislodge it, and a pice of carrot came out.

Ewwwww.

ewww indeed!!!

That's nasty, me3dia.

you mad hot pepper people awe me. I can pretty much only do whitegirl spicy - but I try, because I love hot food buzz.

Once, when making a curry sauce, I chopped up some garlic, ginger and habaneros in a food processor. Upon a tiny lick to the bottom of the spoon after sliding it across the top of the resulting paste, my tongue was burning, sweat was pouring from my forehead and my eyelids were on fire. It was a novel experience.

Chopped up a bunch of jalapenos once while making chili on a group camping trip. Camping, so it's hard to wash your hands. Three hours later, I went to take my contacts out. Damn if it didn't take three days for my eyes to fully recover.

Hey goatdog - I've had that pepper! I thought it was a greenbean. I was beet red and crying and everyone in the kitchen came out to ask if I okay. Now I'm suspicious of all green beans.

I once took a bite of some spicy horseradish, thinking it was, um, mashed potatoes.

It was a bit dark.

I'm accustomed to spicy food, so it wasn't something I couldn't handle, it was just a bit ... unexpected.

Speaking of that, yeah, I like telling the waitress, "Yes, Chinese hot, not American hot", otherwise I get this kung pao chicken that might as well be KFC.

Ok ewww on the carrot chunk.

In my brief bartending job years ago I made a batch of bloody mary's and didn't' wash my hands before rubbing my eye. Ow. The only other thing was on a business trip to Brussels years ago. I was all excited thinking, cool I'll get a Belgian waffle who cares if it's lunch! But they all wanted to go to some Vietnamese restaurant, so that's where we ended up. There was some stuff that looked like cole slaw so I took a big forkful since it was the only recognizable thing on the plate. It was really potently spicy - I think it was kim chee (sp?) maybe? I wanted to spit it out but I swallowed it whole and drank most of the pitcher of water with the rest of lunch. Made the Belgian waffles look that much more appealing.