My general point still holds, though. My rule when ordering spicy food is get it hot enough to sensitize the palate, to let the complex and subtle interactions of the flavors come through. If it's so overdone your taste buds can't distinguish anything past the hot, you're merely abusing yourself.

Some (many!) folks make "how hot can you stand?" into a macho thing. These folks are missing the entire point. I have an extremely high threshold of pain, but I don't go around carving my initials into my arm with a Swiss Army knife.

Anymore.