Subscribe to Outside Magazine
advertisement
Performance Insiders

Today's Question
Is it OK to workout when I'm sore? answer

How can I better avoid ankle sprains? answer

Nutrition Doc

Today's Question
Is one multivitamin a day enough? answer

Why do I keep hearing now that soy is bad for me? answer

Lab Rat Browse Fitness

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries
share this article del.icio.us DIGG Facebook StumbleUpon

Outside Magazine November 2003
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 

Drug Test (Cont.)

A MONTH LATER, when I added a basic anabolic steroid to the mix, I felt like I'd grabbed on to a car moving at 60 miles an hour. The effect was powerful, fast, and difficult to modulate.

Dr. Jones gave me a steroids tutorial over lunch one day, at a Middle Eastern place on Ventura Boulevard. He explained how "steroids" is a broad term for various synthetic substances related to the male sex hormones, and that they promote the growth of skeletal muscle and the development of male sexual traits. Though each steroid has different effects, they generally increase the amount of nitrogen in the body, which in turn stimulates protein synthesis.

All of which is a fancy way of saying that steroids help the body create muscle. They're used medically to treat everything from anemia to leukemia to AIDS, helping patients build strength.

Dr. Jones took out a pen and
"People forget that it's the drugs, not them," Dr. Jones warned me about steroids. "It's like when you take Viagra and you think that's how you'll always perform. No, no, no."
drew a chart on the paper tablecloth. On one side he listed various kinds of steroids: Anadrol 50, Winstrol, Deca, Anavar. Then he added columns labeled MASS, STRENGTH, WATER GAIN, RETENTION. For each drug, he filled in a number from one to a hundred.

"What you want is something that doesn't give you a lot of mass but adds strength," he said. "I'd start with Deca. It has almost no liver toxicity and has the nice benefit of helping joint pain. In Europe, it's used for arthritis. There's only one reason everybody doesn't use Deca."

"You grow two heads?"

"Worse, at least for most athletes. You can test positive for up to a year."

I stared at the chart, fascinated. Then it struck me that there was no column for side effects, nasty little consequences like liver damage, impotence, and steroid rage. I asked Dr. Jones about this.

He sighed and gestured along the wide table. "We don't have enough room to list them," he said. "The problem with steroids is that they do have some benefits, but nine out of ten people who are drawn to them can't resist abusing them. Then there's all the black-market junk out there. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that if you try this stuff a little, it will kill you. It won't. But you stay on it very long and you'll have problems."

"Like?"

"Your hair may start to fall out. Your testicles shrink. Of course, the testosterone can cause all that, too. But any steroid will accelerate it.

"Deca's not so harmful to your liver," he went on, "but most steroids can knock the hell out of it. You can get huge mood swings. Anger, irritability. Sex is a mess. There's a surge in libido, then it falls off a cliff and you don't even want to think about sex. Then, when you stop your dosage, you start to shrink. Depression can set in. Your body starts to slide back to what it was, and most people don't like that. People forget that it's the drugs and not them. It's like when you take Viagra and you think that's how you'll always perform. No, no, no."

All the same, I wanted to try it.

"If you want to try 200 milligrams of Deca for a limited time, coming back to my office every week, OK," said Dr. Jones. "It'll probably help your shoulder, if nothing else." My left shoulder had been hurting for a year since a bike accident. He explained that Deca helps the joints retain water, which eases pain.

Throughout this experiment, I'd been e-mailing people whom I'd encountered on various Web sites, like Extreme-Athlete.com, where steroid users get together and compare notes. That night I went to one of the bodybuilding sites I'd joined and listed what I was taking: the HGH, the testosterone, the EPO, and now the Deca. I thought I was really pushing the limits, but, tellingly, I was immediately mocked for my timidity and puny dosages.

"Dude, why not just take aspirin?" wrote a guy who called himself the Great One. "Try like 600 milligrams of test and 400 to 600 of Deca a week, girlie boy. And what's with this human growth stuff? My mom takes that. Why not Dianabol?" he wrote, referring to a particularly potent anabolic steroid. "You afraid of getting strong?"

It was standard practice on these sites to close messages with a quote or a quip like "I may die, but they'll need a big coffin." The Great One signed his with a thought from Nietzsche. "Everything that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neighbor," it read, "is henceforth called evil."


Next Page
Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11