Spicy food challenges are doing everything to ruin spicy food for everyone. They focus entirely on heat, not flavor.

If you want a spicy hot challenge and only care about the heat, there’s pepper spray.

But super spicy hot foods should be intentionally made to also taste great. The challenge he should be the allure of the spicy food conflicting with the pain it puts you in. If you’re gonna struggle with the heat, you should be equally tempted by the taste.

Da Bomb, for example, is a fucking abomination and shouldn’t ever have stayed in business, nor be promoted by Hot Ones.

I think there may be something to brain chemistry and physical make-up changing over time, but I’d argue that for most people happiness is environmental.