When I put the first Carolina Reaper in my mouth, I was thinking about how the binding of capsaicin to pain receptors is irreversible. Not literally irreversible—perceptually irreversible. The pain passes, but your body remembers. Next time you eat one, the threshold will be slightly higher. You’ll chase that threshold.

2.2 million Scoville units. The tongue reacts first, then the throat, then a heat rising from the chest—not temperature-heat, something more primal, like the body screaming but without the vocal cords participating.

I regretted it after three chews. But regret is a word, and words come after. In the moment there was only a nameless mass lodged between my esophagus and consciousness. I squatted down. Not a decision to squat—my legs just bent.

The kitchen tiles were cool. That was the only concrete sensation I could hold onto.

Later I looked it up online. Some people said eating a Reaper gives you a near-death experience. Some said they saw light. Some said they suddenly understood things. I didn’t. I just squatted on the floor, forehead pressed against the cabinet, waiting for that mass to pass. About fifteen minutes. Or forty. Time isn’t linear in that state.

When I could stand again, I decided to make the remaining peppers into a sauce.

Why sauce?

I don’t know. Or rather, I know, but that knowing isn’t something language can contain. It’s something like this: in those fifteen minutes, I went through a complete cycle. Fear, resistance, surrender, a strange calm, then the body taking over, secreting endorphins, converting pain into something else. When I stood up, I felt good. Not “the pain stopped so I feel good”—a groundless, floating kind of good.

I wanted to put that feeling in a bottle.

This is a stupid idea. Capsaicin is capsaicin; endorphins are secreted by your own brain. You can’t bottle endorphins and sell them. Basic biochemistry.

But I started making sauce anyway.

The recipe is simple. Reaper peppers, garlic, salt, a little sugar, white vinegar. No secret formula. What matters isn’t the recipe—what matters is what I was thinking while making it.

I was thinking: why do people voluntarily experience pain?

Chili peppers aren’t a source of nutrition. Capsaicin has no survival benefit for humans. We eat spicy food purely because we discovered a bug—when pain receptors are activated, the brain releases endorphins as compensation, and that compensation feels good. So we deliberately activate pain receptors to get the compensation.

The problem is the threshold rises. You need hotter peppers to get the same endorphin release. That’s why I went from bird’s eye chilies to facing heaven peppers, from facing heaven to ghost peppers, from ghost peppers to Reapers.

Expanding the balance sheet. Constantly expanding. Until some tipping point.

I gave the first bottle to my roommate. British. Doesn’t eat spicy food.

I said, try a little.

He dipped his chopsticks in, put a tiny bit in his mouth, and then something interesting happened to his face. Not the dramatic “jumping from the heat” reaction—a brief blankness. For about 0.3 seconds, his expression was completely still, like all his facial muscles were waiting for instructions from the brain but the instructions hadn’t arrived yet.

Then his eyes went red. Not tears—the whites started to fill with blood.

He said, Jesus Christ.

I said, wait. It’ll pass.

He didn’t believe me. He drank three glasses of milk. The milk didn’t help—casein can neutralize capsaicin but the Reaper’s concentration was too high. Three glasses of milk just wrapped a layer of dairy flavor around the pain. He squatted down, same as I had.

Ten minutes later he stood up and said, give me more.

I asked why.

He said he didn’t know. He said after standing up he felt strange, a bit floaty, a bit empty, but the good kind of empty, like something in his brain had been cleared out. He wanted to try again.

I didn’t give him more. I said you can’t eat this stuff back-to-back, your digestive tract will have problems.

But I left him the bottle.

A week later, the British guy told me he’d shared the sauce with three of his colleagues.

I asked why.

He said he didn’t know either. He said after eating it a few times, he felt this thing should be experienced by more people. He struggled to describe the feeling—not delicious, not thrilling, but some kind of… He paused for a long time. Some kind of “calibration.” Like every time after eating it, the world’s parameters got reset.

I understood. That’s the state after the endorphins fade. Not happiness—a feeling that the baseline has been raised. The daily irritations, anxieties, that low-frequency noise—in that state, they temporarily disappear. The world feels quiet. Clear.

This isn’t the sauce’s doing. It’s your own brain chemistry. All I provided was a trigger.

But I didn’t correct him. I made five more bottles and had him take them to his colleagues.

I started keeping accounts. Not money—propagation.

British guy → 3 people.

Those 3 → 2-4 each.

Two weeks later, my sauce had reached about 40 people. I didn’t charge money. I just kept making, kept giving. Bought the peppers online—one kilogram of Reapers for £48, enough for about 20 bottles.

In the third week, people started actively seeking me out.

Someone said they saw a Reddit post mentioning “Cambridge’s Reaper sauce,” describing it as some kind of “neural reset experience.” He asked if he could buy a bottle.

I said I don’t sell. I said if you want one, I can give it to you, but you have to promise me one thing: after you eat it, if you think it’s good, you have to share it with at least one other person.

He agreed.

I don’t know why I added that condition. Or rather, I know, but I don’t want to admit it. I wanted to see how big this network could grow.

After a month, people started doing derivative works with the sauce.

A friend who runs a restaurant in London added my sauce to his hot pot base. Said customers loved it. Asked if I could supply him long-term. I said yes, but still no charge. I only asked that he note the source on the menu.

Someone else brought the sauce to Berlin and distributed it at an electronic music party. He said, with the music, the effect was hard to describe. He said someone ate it and stood motionless in the middle of the dance floor for ten minutes, then started crying, then danced for three hours.

I asked him, did you charge?

He said no. He said he felt charging would break something.

I said, right.

After two months, people started making sauce without going through me.

The recipe isn’t secret. Anyone can buy Reapers. People started making “local versions” in their own cities—some added citrus, some added mango, some added nothing at all, just pure Reaper. They all said their sauce was part of “that experience,” just different “branches.”

At first I felt a little uncomfortable. Like watching someone copy your homework. But the discomfort faded quickly. Because I realized something: this was exactly what I wanted.

What I wanted wasn’t control. What I wanted was diffusion.

This network didn’t need me anymore. It had started self-replicating.

The problem came in the third month.

Something happened in Berlin. Someone went into anaphylactic shock after eating the sauce. Hospitalized. The allergen wasn’t the peppers—it was garlic. The person who made that batch used a different variety of garlic, and that person happened to be allergic to it.

Didn’t die. Three days in hospital, then released. But things started to ferment.

Someone posted on Reddit: “Cambridge Reaper sauce almost killed my friend.” Technically that batch wasn’t made by me, but everyone traced the source back to me. People started digging into my background. A Chinese person, in Cambridge, making chili sauce, not charging money, requiring everyone to spread it.

People started drawing relationship maps online, trying to trace the sauce’s propagation path. I saw that map. It was impressive. Starting from Cambridge—London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Shenzhen. A free chili sauce had spread to over a dozen countries in three months.

The comments split into two camps. One said this was performance art, or a social experiment, or some kind of viral marketing. The other said this was dangerous, unregulated food distribution, and bigger problems were inevitable.

I didn’t respond. Not because I was scared—because I didn’t know what to say.

I genuinely didn’t know what this was.

That night I ate another Reaper.

Not made into sauce—raw. I wanted to return to that original state, squatting on the kitchen floor, forehead against the cabinet, waiting for that nameless mass to pass.

But this time was different.

Still hot. 2.2 million Scoville units hadn’t changed. But my reaction had. I didn’t squat down. I stood in the middle of the kitchen, felt the heat spread from tongue to throat to chest, but that heat didn’t overwhelm me. It was just there, like a familiar visitor.

The endorphins came, but not as intensely. That feeling of the world being reset—discounted.

The threshold had risen.

I needed something hotter. But the Reaper is already the hottest mass-produced pepper. Above that is Pepper X, 3.18 million Scoville, but it’s hard to get.

I started to understand the addict’s situation. It’s not that I chose to want more—my nervous system demanded more. The first experience is irreplicable. Every subsequent experience is chasing that first time.

In the fourth month, someone started selling the sauce.

Not me. Some node in the propagation network. He was in Berlin, made a website, said his sauce was “authentic heritage,” €25 a bottle. He even registered a trademark: “Scoville Reset.”

I was angry. Not about the money. Because he broke something.

I confronted him. I said, we agreed not to charge.

He said, you not charging is your choice. I never promised you I wouldn’t charge.

I said, but that’s the core of this thing. No charging, voluntary propagation—that’s why this network works.

He said, you’re wrong. This network works because the sauce is good. Not because it’s free. You’ve mistaken means for ends.

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t sure if he was right.

In the fifth month, my sauce was being copied everywhere.

Someone made a “budget version” using regular facing heaven peppers, cheaper, marketed as “entry-level neural reset.” Someone made a “premium version” using Pepper X, claiming “ultimate experience,” £50 for a small bottle. Someone made a “subscription service”—one bottle of different recipe sauce per month, quarterly billing.

Someone made “sauce NFTs.” Not selling sauce—selling “conceptual ownership” of sauce. You buy this NFT, you “own” the “spiritual copyright” of a certain batch. The sauce itself is still distributed free, but you can tell people: the concept of this batch is mine.

I went to look at that NFT’s sales page. It said:

“This is not a bottle of sauce. This is proof of experience. You cannot own pain, but you can own the burn.”

Priced at 0.5 ETH. About £800.

Three sold.

One day, I received an email at my office. Someone said they’d quit a ten-year alcohol addiction after eating the sauce. They said they didn’t know why, but every time they wanted to drink, they’d eat a little sauce, and that “reset” feeling would make them forget about alcohol. They wanted to thank me in person.

The same day, I received another email. Someone said their friend quit their job after eating the sauce. The friend said after eating it they “saw everything clearly,” felt their job was meaningless, and resigned the next day. Now the friend was on Capri, almost out of money, but said they were happy.

I didn’t know how to reply to either email.

In the sixth month, things completely spiraled.

Someone wrote a long article on a tech blog titled “Chili Sauce, Ponzi Schemes, and the Attention Economy.” The article analyzed my sauce’s propagation model, calling it “a perfect viral growth case study.” The author used my sauce to illustrate a point: in an age of attention scarcity, anything that provides “intense experience” will automatically form a propagation network, regardless of whether that experience is good or bad, regardless of whether money changes hands.

He quoted a chat I’d had with a friend. I don’t know how he got it. In that chat I said:

“This whole world is a Ponzi. You think you’re making choices, but you’re just expanding the balance sheet. Everyone is borrowing from their future selves, trading present pain for future pleasure, mortgaging future pain against present pleasure. Chili sauce just makes that process visible.”

The article had over four hundred comments.

Some said I was a genius. Some said I was a fraud. Some said I was a performance artist. Some said I should be prosecuted. Some said I should do a TED talk. Some said I needed a psychiatrist.

One comment made me pause for a long time. The person said:

“This isn’t a Ponzi. A Ponzi has someone in the middle taking a cut. The sauce creator isn’t taking a cut. This is more like… a religion? A religion without a god. The initiation is eating a pepper. The evangelism is sharing a bottle. The doctrine has only one line: transform pain.”

I don’t know if that was criticism or praise.

In the seventh month, I stopped making sauce.

Not because of external pressure. Because I realized something: this network had nothing to do with me anymore. It was growing on its own, mutating on its own, splitting into countless sub-networks. Some sub-networks still maintained the “no charging” rule; some had fully commercialized. Some still used my original recipe; some were unrecognizable.

I created something, but that something was no longer mine. It had its own life.

I sat in the kitchen, looking at the last batch of Reapers. About thirty-something left. Red, wrinkled, like a pile of shriveled hearts.

I threw them all in the trash.

A year later, someone made a documentary about “the Reaper sauce phenomenon.”

They interviewed over twenty people. Some said the sauce changed their lives. Some said the sauce ruined their stomachs. Some said they’d never eaten the sauce, just bought the NFT. Some said they’d become immune to peppers and were now eating industrial capsaicin.

They wanted to interview me too. I declined.

But I watched the documentary. In the last ten minutes, the director asked: if you had to summarize this phenomenon in one sentence, what would you say?

One person said: This is a story about transforming pain.

One person said: This is an experiment in free economics.

One person said: This is a case study in why humans need extreme experiences.

The last interviewee was the Berlin guy—the first one to start charging. He said:

“You’re all overthinking it. It’s just chili sauce. Chili sauce is chili sauce. People eat peppers because peppers are hot. That’s it. All the meaning is stuff you added yourselves. The creator added it, the spreaders added it, the commenters added it, the documentary added it. The pepper itself has no meaning. It’s just hot.”

I closed the video.

He was right. And he wasn’t.

You’ve always been borrowing from yourself. The pepper just let you see the bill.

Two years later, I was giving a talk at an academic conference. About Bitcoin’s security budget problem. Halfway through, someone raised their hand to ask a question.

They said: You’re the one who made that chili sauce, right?

The room went quiet for three seconds.

I said, yes.

They said, so what do you think is the connection between Bitcoin and chili sauce?

I said, do you really want to know?

They nodded.

I took a small bottle out of my bag. A little sauce left. I don’t know why I was still carrying it.

I said, eat this and you’ll understand.

They didn’t take it.

I put the bottle back in my bag and continued with my slides.

“The only difference is, Bitcoin’s collapse will bankrupt a lot of people. Chili sauce’s collapse will just give you diarrhea.”

The room laughed.

But I didn’t. Because I was thinking about another question: when I first made the sauce, was it really to watch a propagation network? Or did I just want to find a way to share those fifteen minutes of waiting for pain to pass with someone else?

I don’t know.

Some questions have no answers. Some answers are harder to bear than the questions.

A few days ago I was in a supermarket in London and saw a bottle of sauce on the shelf.

The label said “Scoville Reset: Original Cambridge Formula.”

Priced at £4.99.

I picked it up and looked at the ingredients. Reaper peppers, garlic, salt, sugar, white vinegar.

Exactly the same as my original recipe.

I put it back on the shelf. Walking out of the supermarket, I felt a bit hungry.

I wanted yuxiang rousi.