The Addiction To Pepper Sauce Hits Home
photos by Hannah Colclazier
According to a recent study, hot sauce production is America’s eighth-fastest-growing industry, expanding almost as quickly as yoga studios, self-tanning products and social network gaming. How is this possible? A brainy Slate writer named Matthew Yglesias provides the answer: “capsaicin, the molecule that makes hot sauce so ‘hot,’ is basically like heroin.”
I have gone to extraordinary lengths for a fix. Lifting bottles of Tabasco from restaurants. Bartering family heirlooms for hard-to-find small-batch varieties like Uncle Brutha’s #10. Showing up at a colleague’s desk, shivering, to ask for a














