Several years ago , some friends and I decided we were going to work our way through eating the hottest peppers on the planet . At the time , the ghost pepper was the hottest , so we ordered a batch from a guy who grew them in Florida . He was very serious , claiming to grow them in isolation to maintain their potency . In a strange twist of fate , while the peppers were in transit , the announcement was made that the ButchT variant of the Trinidad Scorpion had surpassed it . Deflated , we decided to go ahead and eat them anyway . I ended up eating three , because , why not , it ' s not the hottest any more , right ? This was very painful , and was not quelled by milk or ice cream or any of the dairy products we ' d bought in a misguided attempt to provide succor . The only thing that helped was swigging icecold water and spitting it out again . It was bad , but it was far from the end . After the initial pain wore off , the evening went relatively without event , and I went to bed as normal . Perhaps even a bit triumphantly . I woke up sometime around 6 AM from the pain . Sharp and pulsating in my lower stomach , it was like having appendicitis again though obviously it was not , since I no longer have an appendix . I managed to crawl my way to the bathroom , and the pain increased to the degree that it made me nauseated . I can now say , from experience , the only thing worse than eating three ghost peppers is throwing them up . The reaction of my body was so violent that I actually threw up ghost peppers into my sinuses . The pain was exquisite . I barely remember anything beyond just white intensity of awareness .