Poison pass: a man who developed a resistance to snake venom
For the past 30 years, rock singer Steve Ludwin has been injecting himself with snake venom. In a surprising twist, his odd behavior may suddenly be able to save tens of thousands of lives. Britt Collins, his former partner, relates his bizarre narrative.
My ex-boyfriend didn't show up for dinner in 2006, I figured something was wrong or that he'd forgotten. He called to apologize a week later, saying he'd had an overdose and mistakenly injected a fatal combination of venom from three snakes. Much has been written about Steve Ludwin, the man who injects snake venom, and his life has recently become a nonstop flurry of foreign journalists and video crews reveling in the apparent craziness of it all.
Steve was once my great love; an animal lover, vegan, and musician who penned songs for Placebo and Ash, as well as performing with Nirvana at the Reading Festival. He experimented with snake venom in between tours and recordings. He appears as a type of living specimen and star in a short video at the Natural History Museum's new exhibition, Venom: Killer and Cure, in his latest incarnation as a self-taught snake specialist, moulding himself into the part of a lifetime.
"How cool is that?" says the narrator. "Normally, to be in a museum, you have to be dead or a fossil," Steve, now 51, explains as we sit in his Kennington flat, which has a roof terrace with views of the London Eye and Parliament. He and his family live there.
He lives there with his Australian banker girlfriend Suzy, a rare iguana, and various snakes, as well as his Russian blue cat Pushkin.
For the past 30 years, he's been shooting, eating, and scratching venom from some of the world's deadliest snakes into his flesh. "Snakes are fucking all over the place." Two snakes are used as a symbol for medicine. "They're imprinted in our brain and DNA," he says, proudly proclaiming that he hasn't been sick in decades and that he has acquired a "superhuman immune system." It's hard not to believe him. He appears to be in excellent physical condition.
He did it for the first time in October 1988, showing me his swollen wrist. I refused to give in to his demands and assumed he was stoned. Steve now laughs at the memories. "Not really... maybe," he declares "However, you know how much I've always adored snakes." I had no idea what it would do to me, but I was curious to know if it was possible to develop immune to snake venom."
Between the daily grind, narcotics, and groupies (he had mad Japanese admirers coming up on our doorstep at all hours, leaving love notes and big teddy bears that terrified our cat), Steve and I reached the end of our relationship. Despite the fact that we had broken up, we remained friends.
Steve was always restless, curious, and willfully damaging in certain respects. As a result, I wasn't surprised when he had a venom overdose. He originally refused to go to the hospital for fear of losing his snakes. Instead, he sat down with a Chinese takeaway to watch David Attenborough's reptilian series Life in Cold Blood, as his hand grew to the size of a baseball mitt. I began to ponder. Wow, this is incredible. "I could easily die here," he recalls, recalling a pain he compares to "being stung by a thousand bees."
I persuaded Steve to pick up a guitar and make music when he was 20 and "unsure what to do with the rest of his life." He auditioned for My Bloody Valentine months later. He established numerous semi-successful indie bands until securing a million-pound deal with Island Records with his band Carrie, inspired by the Beatles, REM, and Black Flag.
I couldn't get out of bed for a month after an unscrupulous music business person stole my magazine Lime Lizard. "You have three choices: either you rot in bed like Brian Wilson; we can pay Bradley [one of his violent East End gangster buddies] to break his legs; or you forget about it and create something," Steve added, in his laid-back style something different. Why don't you write a book about Nirvana, your favorite band? You know they'll be big." I whipped up a proposal and enlisted the help of my best friend Victoria Clarke, who was a little confused at the time. In 1991, before Nevermind was out, we immediately secured an agent and a major publishing deal.
Our arrival in London coincided with the late-eighties underground scene blossoming with bands like the Stone Roses, which felt like the 1960s to our generation. Steve and I were together for seven mainly happy years, and I vividly recall the shows, stage-diving to Mudhoney and the Pixies, and dancing at the Syndrome, an after-hours club on Oxford Street, where we met Ride and Blur.
In February 1986, Steve and I met at Eckerd College, a small liberal arts college on a sun-drenched strip of Florida shore. For my one and only semester there, I was a transfer student from UC Berkeley. Steve and I shared a room in a co-ed dorm. I started dancing outside his window one evening as I walked back from supper, hearing New Order's Temptation blasting from his room. We exchanged one glance and that was the end of it. He had the appearance of an all-American boy – tall, lithe, chiseled, with a floppy fringe and a smattering of freckles – but he wasn't. Steve was born on a Los Angeles air force installation. Ray, his father, was a Pan Am pilot who met his lovely mother.
When Jacqueline was a stewardess. He grew up in New Milford, Connecticut, with two sisters and lived next door to Eartha Kitt, the original Catwoman from the 1960s Batman TV program. I was aware that Steve was a stoner, but he was also hilarious and entertaining, with a fantastic New Romantics hairstyle and excellent musical taste. His attractive features, his quirkiness, and his intensity struck me: he believed in aliens, the deep state, and punk as a philosophy. We skipped morning lectures and went to a smokey indie club that night, dancing to the Violent Femmes and Psychedelic Furs until 4 a.m. That was the beginning of our love affair, as well as our deep and lasting friendship. We didn't realize it at the time, but it was a really romantic time.
On our second date, sitting on his bed, I felt something brush against my ankle and thought: “Perfect, he has a cat.” Glancing down, an 8ft boa, thick as a motorbike tire, slithered from under the bed. I screamed and shot out of his room.
When Steve calmed me down, taking my hand like a small child and showing me the satiny-softness of the boa, I lost my fear of an animal that had previously terrified me, and eventually fell in love with lizards, too, even naming my magazine after them. At the end of term, Steve was keen to show me Costa Rica, where he’d lived as a student. Soon enough, we found ourselves alone among iguanas, parrots and howler-monkeys on the deserted beaches of Manuel Antonio, traipsing bare-legged through remote rainforests filled with ultra-territorial predators like jaguars and pumas, and the baddest killers on earth: toxic frogs, spiders and snakes like the deadly bushmaster, which I nearly tread on, and crossing into Nicaragua to see the sea turtles in Tortuguero during the Sandinista-Contra conflict that was terrifying to everyone but us. Before we even got on the dodgy fisherman’s boat from Limón, we could hear gunfire and mortars exploding in the distance. Steve, unfazed, said, “Fuck it, we have to die sometime,” and I went along for the adventure. Steve bought a T-shirt off the back of a Sandinista rebel for $50. Like many college kids steeped in left-wing politics in Reagan’s America, we were rebelling against the pervasive conservatism and generation that ran our lives, searching for something authentic.
I've Injected Myself With Snake Venom, It's Similar To Drinking Coffee For Me: It Gives Me A Jolt Of Energy
I've always had a morbid fascination with snakes. I've always loved animals, especially reptiles, and I started drawing snakes when I was three years old. When I was five years old and lived in Connecticut, I captured my first snake: a little, non-venomous garter snake. I started bringing them home and reading about them after that. My parents put up with it, and when I was ten years old, they let me have my first boa constrictor.
My father took me to the Miami Serpentarium soon after, where I met Bill Haast, a man who milked cobras and rattlesnakes. He was injecting himself with the venom because he believed his blood might be used to heal snakebite victims; he also appeared to be resistant to it, claiming never to have been sick in his life. He lived to be 100 years old. I couldn't get the memory out of my head.
In 1987, I relocated to London and worked for a company that sold animals to zoos and universities, unpacking tarantulas, cobras, and rattlesnakes. It was my dream job since I could have as many snakes as I wanted. My boss didn't mind when I started bringing deadly snakes home to inject their venom.
I used a green tree viper the first time I milked a snake and injected myself with 0.5ml syringes from the chemist. It was terrifying: after putting the slightest drop of venom into a little incision, there was bruising and swelling all over my arm.
That was 28 years ago, and every couple of days since then, I've been injecting myself. It's similar to drinking coffee for me: it gives me a jolt of energy. In the last 13 years, I haven't had a cold or the flu. Snake venom's health advantages are still being studied. The components present in snake venom have been used in the United States to try to inhibit cancer cell proliferation. A possible painkiller has also been discovered in the venom of the black mamba, according to French experts.
I now have 18 snakes, some of which are deadly and some which are not, and I milk a rattlesnake and two vipers. However, it's a risky procedure. You must hold the snake behind its head after covering the mouth of a shot glass with clingfilm and place it in a position where it will bite down on the glass and discharge its venom. It could be poking its fangs into you if you make a mistake. As far as the snake is concerned, it's a harmless and rapid process, similar to collecting saliva.
Eight years ago, I had a near-death experience when I overdosed on a cocktail produced with venom from my rattlesnake, eyelash viper, and green tree viper. I tried it as part of a health experiment, but it backfired spectacularly. It was a blunder of a decision. I inserted the needle into my left wrist, and I knew it was game over as soon as the venom was injected. My hand swelled up to the size of a baseball glove, and fluid filled my arm all the way to my shoulder.
They couldn't believe it when I told them I had purposely injected three separate deadly snake venoms. I was in intensive care for three days; they stated there was a serious infection, They indicated there was a good chance they'd have to amputate my arm. They didn't, in the end, and I was released.
They insisted on seeing me again a week later. They took pictures of my arm and told me it was the best recovery they'd ever seen. This was undoubtedly due to all of my past injections. If I were bitten by a venomous snake, I believe I would have a good chance of surviving.
Every week, I play tennis with a much younger pal. I inject cobra and rattlesnake venom about an hour before and feel like a 23-year-old again. I'm not saying it's not cheating, but having so much vitality at 50 can seem weird.
Professor Brian Lohse of the University of Copenhagen is one of the scientists with whom I'm now collaborating. They're looking into making a safer anti-venom, which is currently created by injecting venom into animals, primarily horses. As part of their investigation, they're looking into my antibodies.
After years of self-immunization, my body has dealt with venom. Everything revolves around nature for me: what might kill you can also rescue you. It's a delicate balancing act, but for me, it's well worth it.
WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
When you're bitten by a deadly snake, what occurs next?
WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? When you're bitten by a deadly snake, what occurs next?
Snakebite is one of the world's most overlooked health crises, killing over 100,000 people each year. But what exactly does venom do to you?
Venom is considered to have developed at least 100 times on its own. Thousands of venomous species exist now all over the world, and their venoms have evolved over time to perform specialized functions in the animals they envenomate.
Learn what snake venom does, why some species have extraordinarily potent venom, and why treating snakebite quickly is so vital.
What is the purpose of venom?
Many creatures utilize venom to prey on their prey, killing or immobilizing it before devouring it. It's also regularly utilized for defense, serving as a harsh and memorable warning to would-be predators.
There are over 700 species of front-fanged venomous snakes, nearly all of which are members of the Viperidae and Elapidae families. The Colubridae family includes another 1,800 species with rear-fanged wings. Many of these are likely to be poisonous as well, albeit, with a few exceptions, this group poses less of a hazard to humans.
Snakes evolved venom to aid in hunting, but some will use it to defend themselves.
Adder swallowing
Venom has evolved in almost all snakes to aid in hunting. The venom's effect on a prey item's body, however, is dependent on the snake species.
Venom can also be used for a variety of additional purposes that are less well-known. Male platypuses, for example, utilize their poisonous spurs to defend themselves during the breeding season, tawny crazy ants use theirs as an antidote to fire ant venom, and certain species, such as shrews, are suspected to employ their venom to store food.
What is the effect of snake venom?
Vipers (Viperidae) and elapids (Viperidae) are two of the most well-known venomous snake families (Elapidae). In general, the venoms in these two classes have differing effects on bite victims.
The venoms of vipers, which include adders and rattlesnakes, are often hemotoxic. They attack the vascular system in this way. They can induce bleeding or make it difficult for blood to clot.
Many well-known venomous snakes, such as cobras, mambas, kraits, and taipans, are elapids. Their venom is usually neurotoxic, which means it interferes with nerve impulse transmission. It usually has an immobilizing effect, causing the victim's body to become rigid or limp.
WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
When you're bitten by a deadly snake, what occurs next?
The European adder (Vipera berus) is the only poisonous snake in the United Kingdom. It belongs to the viper family of snakes.
Venoms can have a variety of consequences, including neurotoxicity and haemotoxicity, which are not mutually exclusive.
Taipans, for example, have immobilizing neurotoxic venom with excellent blood clotting properties.
Rattlesnakes can bleed profusely, but their venom is also cytotoxic (tissue-damaging), causing wounds and necrosis. The venom of some rattlesnakes is also neurotoxic.