The Man Who Grows Pure Pain

Ed Curry found himself lying in the pouring rain, unable to move. His heart raced, his arms went numb, his mouth felt like it was on fire. The heat pain lasted two hours. Then the cramps set in for four more. He had brought this suffering upon himself by tasting the fruit of his own labor: a hybrid chili pepper the size of a golf ball, covered in bumps and spikes, looking "like an apple that has gone through a Frankenstein." He calls it Pepper X. It's up to a thousand times hotter than a jalapeño, more powerful than most brands of police-grade pepper spray, and it recently set a Guinness World Record for the hottest chili pepper ever measured in a lab.

For Curry, Pepper X is the culmination of more than two decades of crossbreeding. Peppers aren't just his hobby—they're his livelihood. And the hotter they are, the better for business. "By making things hotter, we can produce products that are in your grocery store right now at a cheaper cost," he says. "It's about economies of scale."

From Addiction to Addiction