steve ludwin: i'm going to showyou the effects of the hemotoxin in venomon blood, ok? and you can already see prettyquickly, it's kind of congealing. it's quite gloopy. and i'm beginning to wonder ifthat's such a good thing to be happening in my body. sometimes i think, god,that can't be good. i don't have a medicalbackground.
i have no fucking idea whatit's doing to my body. if i did die due to snake venomor whatever, i'm sure it'll be quite funnyto a lot of people. and they'll go, you see? you see? and even to myself, as i wasfloating out of my body and looking down below, i'm surei'd be laughing my ass off. like, you idiot. you're not supposed to injectsnake venom, you fool.
my name is steve ludwin, andi've been self-immunizing with various snake venoms forwell over 20 years now. i'm kind of embarrassed. i mean, i don't know havethat medical background. i don't even have a proper american high school education. there's been quite a few doctorsand scientists that have been horrified by my lackof having things that are sterile and stuff like that.
we have our lower bajarattlesnake. and bang. you see that? that's one unhappyrattle snake. relax. i've always beenin good health. i haven't had somethinglike the flu in coming up on nine winters. and as i've gotten older,people have started to
comment, oh wow, you don't seemlike you're 46 years old. i had some doctors do tests onmy skin, and they were all kind of a little bit baffled. all right, buddy. up. this girl doesn't reallylike it very much. this is why i'm always nervousholding a viper because they can spin their fangs around andactually go through their lip to get your fingers.
this snake is not wantingto be milked. sometimes that happens. i had quite an unusualsort of upbringing. i'm the son of a pan am pilot. i had a real "catch meif you can" leonardo dicaprio sort of lifestyle. i had a credit card. it just said pan am on it withmy name, steve ludwin, and i could get on any plane,as long as i was
wearing a tie, for free. my father took me down to themiami serpetarium, when i was about nine years old, and i gotto meet this now famous herpetologist calledbill haast. he was the first westerner tostart injecting himself with snake venom. he started in 1948. i was very young andimpressionable. i loved snakes.
from that moment on aftermeeting him, i was like wow, you can become immuneto snake venom? this is crazy. that's called vaccinology. it's the oldest form ofmedicine apparently. when i was about 17, i was like,i've got to get that venom into me somehow. this is called a pope's treeviper, and i'm a little bit wary of them.
but it's a beautiful snake. don't know if you cansee those fangs. do you see that fang? it's a hemotoxin and it's goingto cause massive tissue destruction. people have died from thesesnakes, so you do not want that on your finger. i moved to london in 1987, and istarted working in east end. it was called the vivarium.
and basically my job for 1 pound60 an hour was to unpack cobras and scorpions andtarantulas and reptiles for zoos and laboratories. see you later. i started bringing thevenomous snakes home. my first time doingit was crazy. i had never even milked a snakebefore, and i just kind of had to figure itout on my own. so what i would do is i wouldtake a scalpel and scratch
like two little scratchmarks into my arm. i would take a little bit of thevenom, and i would drop it into the cut. and you could feel itthe first time. it was like ah, that burns. i quickly washed it offbecause i was scared. i was like, what isthis going to do? it kind of swelled up and myheart started pounding, not because of the venom, becauseit was like, oh my god, is
this going to stop? is it going to kill me? i had no idea. since people have kind of heardwhat i've been doing and stuff like that, i've seena lot of people bitching. they're worse than like "startrek" fans, to be honest with you, reptile people sometimes. i always thought when theinternet came, i was like, wow, you can communicate withother people that have the
same passion aboutthese animals. but it's not the case. there's a lot of bitchiness andwho has the biggest snake. i don't keep big snakes. guys that keep big snakesare hiding a secret. this is the last hemotoxicsnake that goes into my snakebite cocktail. this is called aneyelash viper. this is one of the scariestsnakes that i own.
this the snake that bit me. the worst pain that i'veever had in my life. and i've had lots of accidentswith venom. but it felt like you had putyour hand down on a marble table and someone took asledgehammer and smashed it onto your pinky. but the funny thing is that thatpain never subsided for eight fucking hours. and i had some scientists in thestates saying get yourself
to the hospital. this is not a good snaketo be bitten by. but i kind of waited it out. i had confidence that iwas going to be ok. but it's a really aggressivesnake, and it's really tricky to milk. there you go. whoa, there's lots of venomcoming out there. thank you.
so those are our hemotoxins. i posted a really beautifulsnake that i have on youtube. it's called a macropspit viper. just because i'm handlingthis snake, it's called free handling. there's death threats and peoplehave just gone crazy. i could poke it in my eyea million times and it would not bite. "these snakes can andwill kill you.
everybody take agood long look. the moron attached to that armis the reason why you have trouble keeping your reptileslegally." i'm not a moron attached to this arm. oh, yes i am. "to think we lock up pedophilesand murderers when sickos like this are freeto roam our streets. what's wrong with the worldthese days?" now, i think that's somebody beingsarcastic.
ok, here is a good one. "you, to put it kindly, arean ignorant fucktard. i sincerely hope youget bit hard. and i strongly dissuade anyonewatching this video from repeating the actions of thissmall-penised individual. stupid dick hammer."now, that's good. that's good. this next snake is the najakaouthia which is responsible for a lot of deathsevery year.
in the time that i've beenworking with this snake, i've had some injections where i wasa little bit cocky with it and got the dilutionsort of wrong. they were like volcanoes. i had three of them. i had two on this legand one down here. and they were growing andgrowing and burning. and for days, i waslike, oh god, i could feel this pressure.
i touched it and gooshot out five foot across onto the carpet. and i was just like,oh my god. oh fuck. i'm fucked here. and i got this massiveneedle for injecting horses or something. i put on some acdc and it justgave me the strength just to-- against all your will, just pushthis down and you could
feel it going downinto something. do i have the nucleus yet? i'm pulling on this. no, i don't think i'vegot the nucleus. i think i've gone through it. pull it back out, hit thenucleus, and it was just like pwaaachh, just pulling back onthe most disgusting stuff that you'd ever want to see. and i was like, oh, i'm justgoing to squeeze it.
and i squeezed this, but itactually made a sound. it was like peuh. i looked down in thereand there was a fucking hole in my leg. i could see inside my leg whereall the tissue had sort of rotted away. and i noticed flies comingto it immediately. and it stunk. it was like death.
it was rotting. i never want thathappening again. you hear it? this is not the hemotoxicsnake. this is something that's gotthe neurotoxin, the naja kaouthia, which is themonocled cobra. simple. and let go. since i've kind of discoveredthe possibilities with the
neurotoxins in this cobra venom,i've been using it in sporting activities recentlyand kind of testing it. it's kind of added a littlebit of extra speed into my normal abilities. i've been doing tests on myskateboard from my house into the west end. i see how fast i canget in there. i just use the roads, andi think the cobra venom helps with that.
it's just sort of like, i goin between cars, i go in between buses, i go in themiddle of the road. i just cane it. i feel like i've got somuch energy and speed. when i'm skating, i've learnedto actually start moving like a snake. and i found myself just kindof using that s-shape-- carving and carving, and itactually starts giving you a little bit of power.
-william haast, director of theserpetarium, has had much experience in handling cobras. but he still treats them withthe greatest respect. gather 'round, folks,but not too close. steve ludwin: bill haast reallyis my beatles and rolling stones and beach boysall wrapped in one. he died last year. he was just like twoweeks shy of 101. he'd say that he hasn't beensick a day in his life, and it
made me start thinking, ok, wow,there's something here. he was really my parameterof sort of going, is this dangerous? it's working for this guy. he was treating people withpolio, people with ms. he had like 4,000 patients. he had people that couldn'teven walk. and with the right doses and theright ingredients of his medicines that contained varioussnake venoms, people--
i've seen footage of it-- they're playing basketball. but the fda heard about what hewas doing and they shut him down, even though he was havingsuch success with it. but the other thing thatbill haast did, which is totally amazing-- it's miraculous. it almost soundslike a messiah. because he was immune to thesesnake venoms, he's given his
blood to snakebite victimsthat are dying, and then they survive. i've milked all the snakes. and i've got hemotoxinsin one glass. this is the one that kindof had the cocktails. so i'm drawing that venomup into this syringe. so here's what i wassaying earlier. there's no such thing asa poisonous snake. it is not poison.
you see that venomcoming out there? see it on my finger? you can do this. completely safely. if you don't freeze it,it's just like food. it's a protein, itbreaks down. so i have months and monthsworth of various venoms. this is the hemotoxin. i'm going to put six.
what i have here is waterfor injections. i will start on the actual rawvenom, and then what we'll do is we'll use that injection. the first time i triedusing the snake venom was pretty scary. there was no internetback then. but it felt really natural. it felt like it was instinct. this is not diluted.
this is the pure venom. so now, we're goingto do an injection with the diluted hemotoxin. the benefits to the hemotoxins,i'm not too sure. i feel like i need another20 years to do it. i had some doctors test my dnatelomeres and when i was 42, i scored as a 28-year-old. perhaps there aresome anti-aging properties to snake venom.
it could all end tomorrowas well. i'm not saying i'm invincible. this is the shot glass thathas the cobra venom, the neurotoxin. get it all out. i'm going with twodrops of this. this actual cobra that we'reusing is more venomous than a king cobra. one drop of cobra venom cankill 20 to 30 grown men.
yeow. yeah, i mean it just feels-- yeow. feels like a bee stingto start off with. that cobra venom does havea bit of pain to it. it's like "man versus food,"spicy chicken challenge. oh, you motherfucker. i'm 46 now. i'll have to see how many yearsi can go on continuing
doing this. but you do think that it isquite taxing on the body. it is possible in two yearstime, my kidneys fail and i die due to the venom of allthose years, of all those toxins, all the swelling,all the decomposing flesh and the bruising. it all has to filter throughyour kidneys and your liver. and it's really bad stuff tobe going through there. yeow, ok.
that was a little bitmore than five mil. people want to know whatit feels like. it feels like injectingtabasco sauce and rubbing it in a cut. it just burns. i will take another syringehere, and just basically bring that raw venom down with theneedle, which i quite like to work that. diluting is something that'sbeen quite new to me over like
the last four years thati've learned how to do and work properly. i was a bit nervous today wheni was milking the snakes. but when i do these injections,i don't think anything of that. once i know that the dilutionsare right, it's as normal as anything for me now. i always kind of note the timejust in case if i ever did have any problems where i didneed to visit the hospital
again, i would know. the one time i did have aserious overdose, i injected three raw venoms acouple years ago. and i only wanted to putdown a little bit in. and as i was pressingit, just ooop-- the whole thing went in. within 45 minutes, my handwas like a baseball mitt. the venom was swimmingin my body. i had some friendscome over because
they knew i was fucked. they were saying, go to thehospital, go to the hospital. and i just didn't want to. and the next morning, i kepton waking up and it wasn't going down. so i got begged to goto the hospital. they saw my arm and theysaid, what happened? and i said snakebite. three doctors came outand they said, well,
what snake bit you? and i had to just say, well,i didn't get bit. there's three snakes. i purposely injectedit into my arm. they didn't know what to say,and the next thing i know, i was being taken intoanother room. and one of the female doctorsjust came in and was just yelling at me and justsaying, you idiot. you can't do this.
and they were telling me you'regoing to die, and you're going to lose your arm. i was in intensive carefor three days. but i was kind of calmthroughout the whole thing. i don't want to everrepeat it. since i had heard that theamericans and the chinese got busted injecting race horseswith cobra venom and it was making them outperformtheir abilities, i immediately got excited.
and i thought boxing would be agreat thing to kind of see-- is it possible that i couldoutperform my ability? i was working it harder lastyear when i was on my own. i actually felt like somethingwas happening. i was like holy shit, thisstuff is working. it's amazing. you're discreet, but you canget away with it in london. bear grylls. i hate that guy.
in those films, he's like,oh, here's the snake. and you can just bitits head off. and he does. he's killed snakes on tv. that's my fucking family you'refucking around with. sorry, just kidding. one thing i have noticed is thati'm not really feeling the pain, so that could be theother thing that helped those horses along.
why not find out why it'sdoing these things. if it's taking away pain,if it's giving you confidence, or whatever. why not give it to your army? christopher columbus didn'tgo looking for america to discover america. he was looking for thefountain of youth. what does mankind want? they want to live longer.
everyone wants to live longer. apparently, there's something insnake venom that helps its food to accept death. i did feel that once. as i was lying there, and icould feel the numbness in my head and stuff, i had thiscomplete feeling of, oh well, i might die here, but i feltreally happy to die. my heart's pounding. you're alive for a good6 to 12 hours.
like starbucks hasnothing on this. yeah, i must admit thatit doesn't feel great. it's kind of likejell-o in there. and god knows what it'sdoing in there. i wish i understood what'shappening beneath that skin. the next day is always the samewith the cobra venom. it just feels like you'rebeaten up anyway. and then i have a good sort offour days where i feel kind of quite charged.
come on, let's box. come on. -so how many years haveyou been doing this? steve ludwin: over 20 years,probably like 22 years-- -so you've been quitelucky then, really. is there a risk that youtake that venom and it could just kill you? steve ludwin: it is kind of alittle bit playing with fire. i've had maybe three incidentsin my life where it was
borderline life threatening. -what you're saying is it'ssimilar to someone taking heroin or cocaineand injecting it and taking a gamble. so you're gambling with yourlife every time you take it. steve ludwin: i've gotten soused to it, i do it without thinking about it. and because i know the amountsand i know not to push it and where not to push itand stuff, it seems
really safe to me. this certainly isn't physicallyaddictive or it isn't pleasurable. -so you believe you could stoptomorrow and stop taking it, stop doing it? steve ludwin: yeah. yeah. i'd like to do that very soon. i've done it for so long.
i'd like to actually spend-- i'd like to take a year off. -and you've done that,you managed that? steve ludwin: no, i'venever done it. i've never not done it. but i'd like to takelike a year off. -so you're not going to knowif it's addictive until you try it, are you? -is it possible you could beaddicted to pain then, if you
know what i mean? the way it hurts. steve ludwin: i think if i was,i would have other things in my life. i'd be a boxer like you. -yeah, true, true, true. steve ludwin: the day aftergoing boxing, my arm just was even more swollen thanthe day before. but i felt like a truckhad hit me.
i felt like i was being digestedfrom the inside. i was walking around like theelephant man for a day. i can kind of remember it, buti was like in a dream state. i felt like i had been injectedwith a thousand energy drinks. it just felt slightly wrong. i would really like to workwith a forward-thinking company that is going to go,ok kid, we like your ideas. let's start researching this.
and around-the-clockand get it done. i visited the university ofsouthern california a couple years ago, and i met a professorfrank markland, i believe his name is. he's been working withcopperhead venom. copperhead venom is the northamerican pit viper that's being used. they've been studying theeffects on breast cancer cells, ovarian cancer.
it actually inhibits the growthof tumors and basically kind of kills offcancer cells. so there there's real excitementaround that. yeah, the possibilities of acancer cure someday with snake venom, i'd put my money on it. banana? banana.
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