Building my Spice Tolerance

A series where I detail my journey to stop being a wimp about spices. (Started March 1st, 2025 — Updated March 3rd, 2025)

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Background

Throughout my life, I have had a hilariously low spice tolerance. Give me any one of those "super-hot" snacks like spicy Cheetos and Takis and I'll probably tweak the fuck out. I always thought it was just a part of me that I am not able to eat spicy foods without feeling immense pain, but I really want to expand my limited taste palette (autism texture issues be damned).

I didn't even understand why people liked spices, I thought the idea of enjoying spice was masochistic considering that capsaicin triggers the brain's pain signals. However, I also found that people enjoy spice because your brain releases endorphins to cancel out the 'pain' you feel. So, fuck it, I decided I'll finally go out of my way to increase my spice tolerance.

Day One (3/1/2025)

I figured I should start small with lunch today. I ate a pizza hot pocket, but this isn't the big part—I ate it with hot sauce and ranch.

But hey, why did I have ranch if my goal is to increase my tolerance? The hot sauce bottle suggested that I use it with some other sauce, and I didn't want to dive too quickly into having the flames of hell in my mouth. And while ranch does counteract hot sauce, I made sure to gradually drop more of the sauce until I got to my 'well THIS has some damn bite' level and not my 'eh, this ain't much lmao' level or 'holy fuck I am going to DIE' level. Due to my use of ranch, though, it took me like ten drops to get to a level where it didn't feel like a walk in the park. Maybe next time, I should put my sauce directly on whatever I'm eating without ranch? Not ten drops though, Jesus Christ.

Day Two (3/2/2025)

Well FUCK. I stayed true to my word and tried my Hot Pocket without ranch. My lips and mouth are burning but I'm living at least. Hopefully the burning feeling goes away later.

I figure that even though I would have no reason to lie about any of this, I should show at least a bit of proof that any of this is even happening at all. Pics or it didn't happen as they say.

I put however many droplets of hot sauce on my pizza hot pocket as seen in this video. For some reason, I thought it wasn't hot enough as I didn't feel a thing. Then I made a mistake.

Poured too much on my Hot Pocket. Fuck my baka chungus life. I want to bring up my tolerance to eventually eat more spicy foods but. Wow. The feeling isn't that great right now.

actually a little after writing all that the feeling subsided holy shit i did it i survived day two of the self-imposed super hot-pocket challenge and did way better than yesterday

Day Three (3/3/2025)

So I pushed even farther than I did yesterday and... I'm starting to get to where I almost enjoy the psuedo-pain of eating spicy foods? Like, the burning sensation doesn't make me want to cry as much as it used to. In fact, I'm getting to where I take it with stride... even if I still experience a burning sensation with my mouth.

I had lunch at school today, bringing my hot pocket (cause I can't afford school lunch anymore </3) and I was both lucky and unlucky at the same time that they had hot sauce packets. I put the whole packet on the thing and ate up. It was still as stinging as ever and was by no means the walk in the park, but if I were to eat it say years ago I would've cried.

Without going into needless detail, though, my gastrointestinal system did cry. For the first time in my life I purposefully ate enough hot sauce to where I get a stomach ache and the demons (constipation) visiting.

The good thing at least though is that there's no obligation for me to do this "challenge", though. I want to challenge myself and see if it's truly possible for me to enjoy spicy foods as I've sworn them off my whole life, not punish myself for not enjoying them. Thus far, though, I have enjoyed it and take every accomplishment on this goofy ass journey with pride.

Day Four/Seven (3/7/25)

I haven't written here in a few days. And that's for a few reasons:

But what is good is that I just. Eat hot sauce with my food now. Not for any self challenge but for my genuine enjoyment of it. And until I've properly adjusted to my new meds (which may take MONTHS due to the nature of them but I will not say what they are as I'm not comfortable with disclosing that), I might not make a new entry for a long time until I can somewhat comfortably bring my tolerance up further.

Day Eleven (3/11/25)

HI! Turns out I'm a big liar and did push my tolerance further!!

At some point in this adventure, I at the very least wanted to try some of those spicy chips. At least once. My friend suggested that I try Hot Fries as they said that they weren't that bad in terms of spice and I was mentally like, "Ok, bet."

I forked over $2 for some Chester's hot fries rather than eat the barbeque chips I brought. Putting Cholula in my ranch just got kind of old, you know?

And honestly, they were burning hot at first. But they tasted so so good. So much so that I couldn't stop eating them despite the burning sensation in my mouth. The spice did not stop me from chomping these down... which was certainly a way to increase my tolerance. Surely enough, my hot fries were gone before my Hot Pocket.

I didn't have any real digestive issues after this, either! I'm somewhat convinced my stomach beating the fuck out of me is due to adjusting to my new medication and not due to eating more spicy foods. I'm getting more and more convinced as time goes on that if I can handle spices more and more, I'll be able to eat just about any "hot" food. Which will open me to so many dishes I've previously not been able to stomach.