I suffered from severe chronic cluster headaches for 20 plus years. Cluster headaches are horribly painful, and the attacks come on fast. I had been to all the doctors and had all the tests, but nothing ever worked. At one point I was on three different medications including pills and nasal sprays, but nothing seemed to prevent or control my attacks. I knew my headaches were somehow connected to the chronic sinus congestion that had affected one side of my head for years, but the medical community provided no solid answers. I read everything I could about cluster headaches, migraines, and chronic sinus congestion, but there wasn’t anything out there that I hadn’t already tried. The year was 1995 and my future seemed bleak.

In the 1990s, I was a self defense instructor teaching controversial street survival workshops around the country. I was also an advocate for the use of defensive pepper sprays to ward off attackers. My biggest claim to fame was the fact that I would get sprayed with real police pepper spray for live audiences, and this gimmick landed me spots on television shows including Montel Williams, Maury Povich and Oprah Winfrey.

Oprah produced an entire episode about my controversial self defense workshops, and during one of my appearances on her show I taught Oprah how to use police pepper spray. That appearance sparked thousands of calls from various groups requesting pepper spray demonstrations, and suddenly I became known as the “Pepper Man” traveling the country getting sprayed with pepper spray. From 1994 through 1996, I was pepper sprayed over 50 times for live audiences.

Luckily I never had a headache attack during any of my seminars until one fateful day in 1996. I had agreed to be “pepper sprayed” for a news report upstate New York. Just before the news crew was ready to start taping, I was hit with a horrible headache. I nearly collapsed, but the show had to go on. So as my head pounded with excruciating pain, I allowed the news reporter to spray me in the face.