I have no where else to post this so I am posting it here.

Yesterday, after a bit of research, I decided to eat a large amount of ground pepper. I ate one heaping teaspoon, holding the whole amount in my mouth for maybe ten minutes. It induced the production of a ridiculous amount of saliva and soon my mouth was completely full of saliva so I swallowed the saliva/pepper mix and continued to hold the remaining pepper under my tongue until that cause my mouth to fill to capacity with saliva. So I guess that I held some amount of pepper in my mouth for around twenty minutes.

I really didn't expect much. I had read about Space Jam before and knew that black pepper was an ingredient in it but hadn't heard of any psychoactive effects for pepper before. Strangely, I am pretty sure I felt some marked effects. Not anywhere near psychedelic but effects none the less.

Within a short time after swallowing the rest of the pepper, maybe ten minutes, I suddenly felt quite euphoric and could not stop smiling a large dumb smile. I tried to shake off the feeling but found it very hard to do so and decided that I enjoyed it too much to try to stop it. The effects were evident for maybe an hour or so but i wasn't really trying to keep track of the time.

Today I researched the medicinal values of black pepper and found that piperine, which is a major constituent of black pepper, is known to increase serotonin and beta-endorphin production in the brain. So I guess there is good chance that this was not placebo. Even if it was there are a few other interesting properties of this chemical including that it is a thermogenic, meaning that it increases the body's temperature by increasing metabolic rate. This alone is reason enough to start loading your food with a gigantic amount of pepper especially now with the onset of winter. If that is not enough there is the fact that it has antioxidant properties and anti-carcinogenic effects and it increases absorption of many other chemicals and vitamins including selenium, vitamin B, beta-carotene and of course curcumin.

Just take a look at wikipedia. That is where I got most of my info from.