"Somebody else getting good is only going to make me better,"

eventually that endorphin rush takes over, and it feels good

Currie kept chasing money over the next decade, though not always legally. "I wanted money so that I could keep on partying," he says. "I was a functional addict, essentially...I was miserable on the inside."

Finally, one night in 1999, "I wanted to die," he says.

There was a blizzard that night in the Michigan town where Currie was living, and he says he opened all the doors and windows of his condo to let the snow in, planning to lay down and freeze to death.

"I just had that hole, that hole that all people in addiction know," he explains.

Then he saw a vision: "I saw this angel, it was a white apparition." Currie says it was a female, "and that apparition told me to go to a certain place." Currie says the angel told him to look for particular signage, though he didn't recognize it. So he packed up his Camaro "with a bunch of booze and drugs and guns" and started driving in the blizzard. "I actually stopped at a friend of mine's house, just because I wound up there, and they knew where the sign was for this place," Currie says. "We drove the next morning to it, and it turned out to be a rehab facility, and I got clean."

At recovery meetings in his new hometown, he met "a hot blonde" who wasn't interested in him. But one night after a meeting, Currie overheard her talking about how much she loved salsa, so he brought her some made from his peppers.

"Nine months later we were married," says Currie.

His bride, Linda, convinced him to start bottling his hot sauces for sale.

Currie had been working in banking at the time to make some money, but in 2003 he cashed out all his savings and maxed out every credit card he could get his hands on to start PuckerButt Pepper Company. He estimates his startup costs were around $400,000

I started reading all the rules and all the laws, and I insured myself for a whole lot of money, because I didn't want to kill anybody

Currie estimates first year revenues were $89,000.

He started selling product at farmers markets. Then he caught the eye of local media. In 2009, a graduate student from a local college did some testing on his peppers and declared them the hottest in the world.

"Someone got that on the internet, and then the internet just caught fire," Currie says.

Now Currie is a millionaire. He employs 14 staff, with 120 other people working indirectly for the company at several farms.

"I think we're up to just shy of 500,000 plants this year," he says.

Currie is expanding acreage and his product line. He not only sells hot sauces, he sells his own seeds, even to potential rivals

"One of the things I've studied was that the populations that have no indices of heart disease or cancer — unless they've been Westernized — are all around the Equator," he says. "One of the five things you can standardize with those populations is capsacinoids. They eat them with every meal." (Some studies suggest capsaicin can be good for heart health.

no matter how low in life you get, there's always a chance to succeed," Currie says. "You just have to ask for help."