redspy

BY SAMUEL BRUCHEY
STAFF WRITER

George could have been anyone's 16-year-old son. Five-foot-four, 140 pounds of bombast and misdirection, unsure of himself but crazy about girls.

He spent hours pumping dumbbells at home in Ronkonkoma with Nickleback or Metallica screeching behind his closed bedroom door. He fixated on bodybuilders, soldiers and ripped movie stars like Sylvester Stallone. He joined a gym and was hardly home.

"I wanted people to notice me" he said.

George started reading body-building magazines and poring over muscle sites on the Internet. At the gym, he would approach anyone for advice. One day, he asked a guy working at the gym for something more -- a shortcut.

The man led George to his car, reached under his seat and pulled out a large canvas bag of vials and syringes. George wanted $150 of testosterone, and he was in a rush to get started.

The teenager rolled up his sleeve and allowed a stranger to slide a hypodermic needle into his arm.

His mother, Debbie, had her suspicions for months. Her youngest son's mood swings turned their home into daily bedlam. Money went missing from her wallet. He was aloof, and when he wasn't, he had attitude.

Once, she tore through his room searching for a clue as to what had happened to her son. Her answer came in October 2003 when she got a call from her son's high school.

"Even though I couldn't prove it, I knew it was steroids," she said. "I would pray every day that he get caught. That he would be arrested.

"That's exactly what happened."

Dozens of interviews with area gym owners, amateur weight-lifters, law enforcement officials and teenagers suggest that steroids are widely used, easily obtained and beneath the radar of police and schools. One recent national poll by the University of Michigan's Institute of Social Research reported that 3.5 percent of 12th graders have tried the synthetic testosterone replacement.

Nobody knows exactly how many people use or have taken the illegal hormone on Long Island. Fewer than 100 people have been arrested for steroid crimes in the past five years. That number may not be telling, however, because steroid arrests are difficult to make and often aren't a high priority.

While Major League Baseball players Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have become notorious for using steroids, the hormone has also crept into ordinary suburban life. Anecdotal evidence suggests it is taken less as a shortcut to athletic performance and more out of pure vanity.

Users -- most often young men -- risk liver and heart failure, sterility and increased aggression or depression to look good without a shirt.

Impressionable teens and twenty-somethings aren't the only people using the hormone.

Two brothers from Hauppauge -- one a New York State trooper, the other a Suffolk County police officer -- were arrested for using steroids in 2002. James Foley is fighting his charges, Thomas is in prison -- fired from his Suffolk police job.

Steve Michalik, a bodybuilder from Farmingdale who won Mr. USA, Mr. America and Mr. Universe competitions in the 1970s and later developed liver cysts from steroid abuse, says he can tell if someone's juicing by the pungent odor on their skin. He can spot what bodybuilders call a "hammerhead" by the rounded shoulders, square jaw, tight skin and water-heavy muscles.

Not all high schools include steroids in their health curriculum. That so distressed medical and anti-doping experts in Nassau County that they convened a symposium in Manhasset last summer, calling steroid use a societal problem, and urging high school health educators to make it a priority -- and fast.

"The public wrongly perceives anabolic steroids as being of interest only to elite athletes," said Dr. Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and president of the Nassau County Sports Commission. "It's not just for elite athletes. It's a whole fascination with getting a different kind of body, and all that goes along with that."

Like rocket fuel for the body, steroids supercharge growth by spurring cells to do what they do, only more intensely. Protein synthesis and calcium retention are revved up. Red blood cell production spikes. Oxygen flows faster.

Weightlifting speeds up growth even more by stressing the muscles. So steroid users who hit the gym hard can bulk up by several pounds of muscle mass a week. (Taking steroids without weight training can add some bulk, but not as much.)

The synthetic hormone becomes dangerous when testosterone overloads the system, prompting the pituitary gland to shut off the body's natural production of the male hormone in the testes.

Excess testosterone is converted into the female sex hormone estrogen. Men retain water. Their breasts grow. Their testes shrink. They develop oily skin. Acne. Hair loss. And, those are only short-term effects. Liver cysts, stunted growth and heart failure are the long-term risks, Wadler said.

Rick Collins, a Carle Place attorney with a specialty in steroids law, believes taking steroids became more dangerous when using them became a crime after it was added to the 1990 Controlled Substances Act. Doctors were no longer able to consult with patients about usage, dosage, or side effects.

A multibillion dollar black market emerged, said Collins, who advocates for making steroids legal to regulate the industry.

With a few key strokes and a credit card, steroids made in Mexico, Taiwan or Russia for use with animals can be sent to your doorstep, said Collins, who has represented hundreds of steroid users, including several world-class bodybuilders.

They are advertised on-line with photos, even guarantees of quality, purity, but buyers cannot be sure what they are putting into their body.

Tired of 'short and pudgy'

George was still in middle school when he began nagging his father for a bench press, some weights for his bedroom. His brothers were taller, larger. He wanted their respect.

"I was tired of being short and pudgy," he said.

He began taking weight-gain shakes. Then creatine to add size and strength. He hid protein bars in his closet. He built up his body so he could do 20 one-arm push-ups.

"I was so into my body that I got obsessive," he said.

When he bought the steroids, he vaguely remembers being told that they came from Spain. It hardly mattered once he felt a surge come over his body, almost instantaneously.

"It was like URRRGHHH!!!" he said. "I knew that if I kept taking them, I was going to be a gorilla."

In no time, he packed on 20 pounds. Developed eight-pack abs. A tapered back. Buffed chest. And, the attention he had always craved from his friends and from girls.

On steroids, George was bench pressing 180 pounds for several reps, curling 100 pounds on a straight bar. He barely minded the acne that spread across his chest and back.

"For a little guy I was really putting it up," he said.

During the summer of 2003, he spent nearly every day at Jones Beach. At night, he and friends went to Eclipse, a club in Huntington. On the dance floor, George was always the first to peel off his shirt at the DJ's suggestion.

"All these girls were saying that I was so hot," he said. "I was in the center of attention. It felt good for once to be there."

For many young men, the allure of becoming massive and shredded with muscle eclipses concerns about health.

"You start taking them and you feel like superman," Michalik said. "All your dreams are coming true before your very eyes."

That dream is reinforced by pop culture, said Don McPherson, executive director of the Sports Leadership Institute at Adelphi University in Garden City and former quarterback at Syracuse University.

"It's part of this mentality that bigger is better," said McPherson, who said he has never used steroids. "You no longer win, you crush. You no longer compete, you dominate."

In the last 35 years, G.I. Joe's biceps have more than doubled in size, McPherson said. Professional wrestlers, and bodybuilders are oafish misrepresentations of the human form. Movie stars with tough-guy personas are no longer slender and sly. They are men like The Rock and Vin Diesel, whose chiseled bodies are weapons themselves.

The pressure on boys and young men to bulk up is powerful, McPherson said, whether they are athletes or not.

Saw friends getting bigger

Joe, a 21-year-old site inspector for a structural engineering company, thought steroids were for "cheaters," until his friends started taking them.

"I had friends who got bigger, stronger than me within two months," said Joe, who lives in West Babylon. "I had to try it for myself."

His friends wanted six-pack abs overnight, he said. They started blowing off the gym. But Joe had just broken up with his girlfriend and said he needed a way to channel his frustration. So he continued taking them on his own. He switched from pills to injectables, and bought 10 vials of steroids from a friend at a Farmingdale gym for $150. After that, he bought another 10.

He didn't mind shooting the needle into his buttocks. When his mother found his stash in his bedroom, he had no problem lying to her -- Joe told her they belonged to a friend.

The only thing that bothered him was putting needles on the pharmacy counter and getting that look from the guy behind the cash register. "When a young guy buys needles, everybody knows he's a juicer. It makes you feel like a loser," he said.

For about four weeks, Joe didn't see any results. Then, they arrived in a flood. His bench press shot up 100 pounds, to 325 pounds. Even more startling was his incredible stamina. He'd lift weights for three or four hours after an entire day at the beach.

"If someone who is not on steroids does an exercise really hard, the next three exercises you are like so drained," Joe said. "When you are on steroids, you can work eight exercises and your strength is still there."

Four months later, when he decided to give his body a break from steroids, Joe had put on 30 pounds and weighed 230.

"I was taking it to look better," Joe said. "That's pretty much what everybody does. But ... I didn't take off my shirt every chance I got. I just knew I was looking better."

George brought his steroids to school because he was afraid someone would find them at home. But when he pulled out a vial to show a friend, a group of students huddled around him. The commotion caught the attention of a gym teacher.

"My face turned white," George said. "I told him it was my new cell phone. He told me I was going to be suspended if I didn't show it to him. He knew what it was right away."

High school officials notified police and George was arrested for possession of steroids.

Incidents of this kind are rare on Long Island, officials at a dozen school districts said. Cases involving alcohol or marijuana are much more common.

Still, several school officials acknowledged that steroid use among teens is a concern.

"I'm certainly aware that steroids are there," Connetquot High School athletic director Robert DelRosso said. "It's been a problem for quite some time."

School districts differ

School districts are required to send a representative to an annual educational seminar on steroids, said Cathy Gallagher, former executive director of Section XI, Suffolk county's athletic association.

How that information is passed along varies from one district to another, Gallagher said.

At Connetquot, DelRosso said, student-athletes must sign a code of conduct that specifically mentions steroids. All students attend hourlong workshops about the dangers of steroids and what to do if a friend is taking them.

Once, a student told a guidance counselor that she suspected several athletes were taking the hormone illegally, DelRosso said. But the suspicions proved to be false.

Freeport High School students have been warned about the drug since 1989, health teacher Joe Chetti said. "We want to make them aware of the dangers," Chetti said. "Some students say they didn't realize that steroids is a drug."

Jay Matuk, principal of Patchogue-Medford High School, said students caught with steroids will be suspended from school and turned over to law enforcement.

Bellport High School football player Fred Hargrove said he believes athletes are less likely to take them than other students. If a player packed on 15 pounds of muscle in a month, people would notice.

"Coaches have no tolerance for stuff like that," said Hargrove, 18, a senior.

Oceanside High School Athletic Director David Zawatson, a former NFL lineman, said non-athletes need to be better informed about the risks of steroids.

"So while the numbers of athletes who are using them may have actually gone down, the overall number of students has remained constant or gotten worse," Zawatson said.

Adam, 18, of Medford, would have never gotten busted for steroids if not for a broken brake light on his beat-up Honda.

He kept the 100 steroid pills in the car because he didn't want his father to find them.

The officer who pulled him over said he smelled marijuana, and asked Adam if he could search the vehicle. Adam gave the officer permission, forgetting the bag of pills was in the compartment between the seats.

"It was kinda stupid but I didn't think I was going to get pulled over," he said of the arrest last February.

Most steroid-related arrests occur during the course of investigations into other crimes.

"It was always an oh-by-the-way kind of thing," said Robert Ewald, chief of the Narcotics Bureau of the Suffolk County district attorney's office.

Investigations into steroids are viewed as tedious because the gym culture is insular and difficult to penetrate. Steroid use is so widely accepted within bodybuilding circles, police don't receive many tips, Ewald said.

"So, we do it when we get it, but it's always tangential to something else," Ewald said.

Rodney St. Cloud may have been an exception. The firefighter from the Bronx who moonlights as a male stripper was busted in March -- for the second time -- after more than $300,000 worth of steroids arrived in a cardboard box at his wife's office. His case is pending.

On-line steroid cases are harder to crack. Many sellers are outside the United States, so enforcement is hampered by jurisdiction problems, Ewald said.

Selling steroids in New York is a mere D felony conviction, punishable by up to seven years in prison. The charge requires no incarceration, and first-time offenders often get probation.

Father never found out

Adam called an ex-girlfriend and got bailed out of jail the same day he was arrested. A resourceful teenager, he paid for his own attorney, showed up at court, and was convicted of a violation and ordered to pay a $290 fine.

His father never found out he was arrested.

A new federal steroids law that goes into effect in January will outlaw 18 steroid-like compounds that have, until now, been legally available in stores and on-line. Among them is androstenedione, the hormone major league baseball player Mark McGuire lawfully used when he broke the single season home run record.

These "derivatives" provide legal alternatives that are every bit as potent and dangerous as steroids, Wadler said. The products are marketed in exercise and bodybuilding magazines, and on countless Web sites.

"For kids who live on the Internet and know how to surf the Net, they are seduced by these products and they are not very hard to get," Wadler said.

The compound DHEA is legally sold as an anti-aging drug over the counter. Once ingested, it is metastasized into androstenedione, and works as a steroid.

"It is a completely out-of-control industry," said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of the Public Citizens Health Research Group. "It's a bunch of renegade companies taking advantage of weakness in federal and state law."

As a first-time offender, George's misdemeanor possession charge was knocked down to a violation. The family paid the $210 fine and no stain was left on his criminal record

The real punishment, he said, came when a family doctor told George that his sperm count was low. His mother is convinced his growth has been stunted.

It also left a mark on his psyche.

"I was scared," he said. "I kept saying to myself: 'I don't belong here. I'm not a bad kid.'"

George's mother grounded him for two months and canceled his gym membership. After school, he washed and parked cars at a dealership on Sunrise Highway. He joined a junior police officer program in Suffolk, and hopes to enlist in the Marine Corps after he graduates in the spring.

Working out isn't important to him anymore. He's got a girlfriend now and claims he isn't taking steroids.


Taken from Newsday.com

Mudge

People dont notice you a whole lot when you are 5'4", although I admit M.C. at my high school was shorter and looked like a mini Arnold, lean and huge.

Kinesiology Vote @ Top 25 Deads Comp Bench
Motivation Bench form MaxCalc Charles Poliquin
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. Lao-Tzu
I don't know any sources so don't ask - thanks

Stu

Is DHEA covered by the ban or not, i read its still legal OTC

redspy

Thanks to the lobbying efforts (read: donations) of DHEA manufacturers it has magically escaped the ban.

MTN WARRIOR

Notice the comment that" 3.5 % of highschoolers are using steroids". Geez and about 75% smoke pot and about 25% are engaging in sex and about 52% are republican. Which is the worse of all those evils? I know, being a republican.

THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL ME, CERTAINLY MUST MAKE ME STRONGER

JerseyDevil

Did anyone see this week's cover of Newsweek? The cover article is very similar to the story above. It's mainly about a kid who dreamed of playing professional baseball. He used prohormones in high school, then at USC he switched to steroids. The article states that prohormones 'are every bit as powerful as illegal steroids, and helped propel Mark McQuire with coconut sized biceps to hit over 70 home runs'. Yeah... ok.

The kid in the article, after hearing he wasn't picked in the MLB draft... commited suicide. Of course it MUST of been because of the steroids. His grief stricken mom and dad are now on a campaign to make others aware of what can happen if your child goes on the juice. You certainly can't blame them. Losing a child is a horrible thing, but come on. I honestly believe due to the increased hormones at that age, they may have contributed to his suicide. But everyone just assumes it WAS the cause. If he had never taken 'roids, and still commited suicide, his story would have never come to light.

TrojanMan60563

The comments about having eight pack abs in a month and putting on several pounds of muscle mass in a week are misleading comments. Nobody that is out of shape is going to get six pack abs in 4 weeks with or without steroids...they make steroids sound like wonder drugs...like they turn little dorks into supermen, and that they cause supermen to die off like flies....how lame.

musclepump

This article glorifies steroids, IMO... haha

Let's all join together and SPEAK ENGLISH IN AMERICA.

Tha Don

man.. give me JUICE!!!

LAM

anybody with half a functioning brain knows that teens should not take anything OTC or other that interferes with the endocrine system. I have no sympathy for the stupid...

Dumbest statement made in the Anabolic Zone for Nov

TBD

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What you talking about Willis ?

Mikhal

I 'm feel'n ya! Peace n Love

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