Tim Friede was feeling particularly down on the day after the September 11 attacks, so he went to his basement and let two of the world's deadliest snakes bite him.

Four days later, he woke up from a coma.

"I know what it feels like to die from snakebite," Friede told AFP via video call from his home in the small US town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

This experience might put most people off snakes entirely, but Friede simply vowed to be more careful next time.

From 2000 to 2018, he allowed himself to be bitten by snakes more than 200 times. He also injected himself with their venom over 650 times.

Friede endured this pain because he wanted to achieve total immunity to venom, a practice called mithridatism which should not be tried at home.

After a couple of years, Friede started to beli

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