His eyes began watering.

He started to sweat.

His arms began tingling.

And then, he threw up.

No, Ted Barrus does not have the flu. Its just a typical day at the office for the 39-year-old Hammond resident who makes his living on YouTube, where he is known as The Fire Breathing Idiot.

And on Monday, he ate a Jays Red Ghost Scorpion chili pepper at The Daily Astorian office just for kicks.

Barrus, a California native, and his wife Twilla, a clinical laboratory scientist at Columbia Memorial Hospital, moved to Hammond last year, more than a year into his YouTube stardom. He has more than 20,000 subscribers on the video website. That may not seem like much in comparison to other YouTubers, but for pepper eating, hes found his niche.

When I started, there were probably only 10 of us, but now there are probably 200, Barrus said. Nobody is really as close as I am in stats. The guy that I originally watched, Neil Smith in Australia, was the king, and he still is in my opinion, and he has 5,000 subscribers. I have 24,000. For YouTube stats thats really small, because there are people with millions. But for what I do, I have quite a few subscribers.

Finding fame

Barrus has found fame though YouTube as a chili head, a term used for the people in his line of work. And as far as chili heads go, Barrus is the top. He puts in about 70 hours a week, reviewing peppers and hot sauces from around the world  often drinking whole bottles through a straw. He has flown around the world to participate in hot sauce festivals and chili events  free to him. Hes been mentioned or featured in The New Yorker, Maxim Magazine, Worlds Dumbest, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer and other programs.

Diane Sawyer will again use one of Barrus videos tonight on the air.

But Barrus didnt get into this for the love of pain  he wanted to go viral and make a video that would catch everyones attention. He tried a few things, like the cinnamon challenge, a common video on YouTube of a challenger eating a tablespoon of cinnamon to see if they can swallow it. (note: you cant.)

Thats actually really dangerous, Barrus said. Challengers have been known to suffer pneumonia or even a collapsed lung. 

Let the record show that Barrus doesnt have health insurance.

Another path  The dumbest thing I have ever done, he said  came to an end quickly, before he settled on eating the peppers and hot sauce reviews.

I am the only male in the world to take the hottest chili, cut it in half, and rub it in both of my eyeballs, he said. For a while, I wanted a viral video. I wanted that attention. So I decided to take the hottest chili, and see what happens when I rub it in both my eyes, and then eat it. I didnt think it would be that bad. But when you open up a chili, the placenta where all the seeds are, that got stuck under my eyelid. And I was in the shower for an hour screaming.

My wife was at work. And I am not kidding, if I could have gotten to a gun, I probably would have shot myself. Because I couldnt get the pain to go away. It was so bad. For three days I had pain because it scratched my eyeball. Thats the dumbest thing I have ever done, hands down, the dumbest.

Barrus settled on being The Fire Breathing Idiot, a name lovingly bestowed upon him by his wife, by ingesting the peppers and hot sauces. Chilis are measured on the Scoville scale for heat units. It measures the amount of capsaicin in the pepper and is named for American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville.

Measuring scale

A jalapeño pepper measures between 3,500 and 8,000 heat units. The pepper Barrus ate Monday ranks at 1.6 million on the scale. The Muruga Scorpion holds the title of the worlds hottest pepper according to Scovilleheatscale.com, at 2 million heat units.

Its against YouTubes user agreement to disclose how much Barrus makes, but its enough to get him by. His favorite sauce is Tabanero, mild yet flavorful. His favorite pepper is the ghost chili. His least favorite is the grocery store habenero, which he says is packaged green and therefore not very flavorful when it is artificially ripened.

I wanted to just torture my family and friends. I got into this by watching Tosh.0 and I wanted to be on there, he said of the popular Comedy Central show which features challenges. I saw the ghost chili was out so I was going to grow it and torture my family and friends and I made some videos and I wanted to make more, but everyone told me no.

But a friend was moving away, and to make their last visit together memorable the two decided to eat a dried ghost chili.

We did and I threw up and it was horrid, he said. But I got addicted to that endorphin rush. And then the Maruga Scorpion chili came out and that was all over television, on Diane Sawyer, and I was one of the few people that had eaten it on YouTube. So Diane Sawyers people contacted me and put it on the World News and then from there, I blew up in the chili world.

Hot Sauce companies began flooding him with hot sauces from around the world. Chili growers began sending him packages of chilis to try. So Barrus developed pod reviews, a method of tasting the chilis as a professional.

Now I am like the No. 1 chili reviewer in the world, Barrus said.

Limited stardom

But with the job comes its share of risks. Barrus said he cant do this forever, as most chili heads develop an allergy that makes it impossible to eat the peppers. It can also damage his teeth and esophagus. Blisters in the mouth, however, are a myth, he said. Hes never experienced physical reactions except for the following day when he says it feels like giving birth to the sun.

There are risks to those who interview him too.

I put a reporter in the hospital. He wanted to challenge me to eating a Moruga Scorpion, and I told him everything, but he wasnt ready for the cramps, because sometimes you can cramp up, Barrus said. The reporter was from Lewiston, Idaho. He was treated with Dilata and activated charcoal. It wasnt the first person Barrus has put in the hospital, he laughed. Four other people have challenged him and lost.

But they say these chilis are actually good for you, Barrus said. They kill cancer cells, there is a lot of research being done on the benefits. ABC News did a study on it. Its good for helping with colds, sinuses. The only problem I run into sometimes is I throw up. A lot of the dark colored chilis, like the Chocolate Madballz, are extremely hot and it makes me throw up sometimes.

To curb that, milk and other dairy products help to counter the affects. But he wants to still be able to feel the burn, so he takes breaks of up to seven months at a time from eating the chilis.

My dad liked spicy food. I buried him with jalapeños and serranos. But I hated spicy foods. I still dont eat a lot of spicy foods from a day-to-day basis except when I am doing reviews because I want to be able to show that reaction to people, what the average person is going to go through, he said.

Milk and other dairy products help to counter the affects.