Pumping Up Steroid Hysteria [Forum Archive]

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Pumping Up Steroid Hysteria

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Posted by: Prince

Pumping Up Steroid Hysteria
By Patrick Cox Published 02/11/2004

http://www.techcentralstation.com/021104C.html

Perhaps because I lagged well behind my peer group, physically at least, until I was well into my twenties, most of my childhood associations with sports are unpleasant. The shortest and most physically maladroit kid in class after class after class, I was the perennial last-pick when teams formed on playgrounds or PE classes.

Today, my eyes still glaze over when friends talk playoffs and draft picks, and the only games I really care about are those my eleven-year-old son participates in. I suppose it is ironic, therefore, that a serious car accident, while in college, has forced me into a lifelong study of exercise physiology, kinesiology and other sports-related sciences. As sufficient muscle mass seems to be the only alternative to a spinal brace and handfuls of painkillers, I have found myself following or involved in discussions with athletes and trainers more often than many sports writers.

Those associated with bodybuilding, in particular, have pushed the envelope of muscle growth to the greatest extent and are particularly knowledgeable concerning training injuries. While flexing in a bikini bottom probably fails some definitions of sport, no other group trains harder or is as interested and involved in the scientific research behind their sport.

And, like other elite athletes, many take anabolic steroids.

President Bush, a former managing partner of the Texas Rangers, addressed the issue in his State of the Union speech.

"The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids in baseball, football, and other sports is dangerous, and it sends the wrong message -- that there are shortcuts to accomplishment, and that performance is more important than character. So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now."

Pundits and sports writers alike have puzzled over the unexpected inclusion of the steroid issue in the speech. My own theory is that the comments are penance meant to appease cultural conservatives who were unhappy about the President's friendly public appearances with the Governor of California, who has brazenly used drugs in the past.

For dedicated drug warriors, Schwarzenegger is a particular irritant. Despite smoking marijuana onscreen in Pumping Iron and confessing his steroid use on national television, his unprecedented popularity and success in bodybuilding, show biz and politics makes it difficult to paint cannabis smokers as "losers" or steroid users as mere "cheats."

The other admitted steroid-using governor/athlete was professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, whom they could ignore. Arnold cannot be ignored.

Whatever the president's reasons for including the issue in the SOTU, his repetition of defective assumptions about steroid use will likely have far-ranging and unfortunate consequences.

Most notably, the president repeated the adage that "The use of performance-enhancing drugs like steroids ... is dangerous."

The medical evidence simply does not support such a statement. On the contrary, the most commonly taken and prescribed anabolic steroid, testosterone, effectively ameliorates many of the symptoms of aging, including loss of libido (for women and men,) lean muscle mass, and memory. An estimated 2 million U.S. prescriptions for testosterone were written in 2002 and IMS Health has calculated nearly 30 percent annual growth rates.

While skeptical researchers warn that additional research is needed, as they always will, the evidence indicates that the feared downsides of steroid use, such as heart disease and prostate cancer, have been greatly overstated or contrary to their actual effects. Studies correlate low testosterone levels to Alzheimer's disease and obesity.

The more potent androgens, traditionally acquired on the black market by athletes, have suffered even worse press than testosterone, in large part because they are schedule III drugs -- as are barbiturates, ketamine, LSD precursors, and narcotic painkillers such as Vicodin. Much of what is now known about the benefits of these steroids, by the way, is a result of their successful use by the HIV community to improve, dramatically in many cases, the health and survivability of immunodeficient patients. As AIDS and age-related wasting have much in common, the potential for steroid therapy to increase and maintain vigor and muscle mass through and past middle age is profound.

Nandrolone Decanoate is a powerful component, along with Testosterone Cypionate, of a synergistic "stack" popular among athletes. "Longevity clinics," having learned from the experiences of millions of illegal steroid users, are now prescribing, at boutique prices, these drugs. In clinical trials, Nandrolone has been shown to bolster immune system functioning, counter the effects of malnutrition and muscle loss experienced by dialysis patients, increase bone mineral density and dramatically improve the well-being of elderly patients with Osteoporosis.

Tracy Olrich, of Central Michigan University's Department of Physical Education and Sport, says the emerging consensus is that benefits of therapeutic steroid use vastly outweigh the risks, and points out that, for decades, according to conservative estimates, over a million people at any one time have taken illegal steroids. Only eleven deaths, and most of them only indirectly caused by steroids, he says, have been linked to their use. "Compare that," Olrich prompts, "to smoking, liposuction or bicycle riding."

Liposuction's shockingly high death rate is estimated to be between 30 and 1000 per million patients. An equally useful comparison would be to the sporting activities steroids supposedly imperil; amateur football, for example. According to the University of North Carolina-based National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injuries, out of the approximately 1.5 million American football players in junior high, high-school and college. Fifteen died in 2002 -- down from 23 in 2001.

Throw in heatstroke deaths and paralysis, and football stats read like a Dean Koontz horror novel, though track and field, baseball, and even cheerleading have greater incidences of catastrophic injuries. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recorded 88 deaths in youth league baseball from 1973 to 1995. Other researchers estimate more than 100,000 acute baseball injuries, including serious eye traumas, annually in 5- to 14-year-old children.

It is no secret that, even without a career-ending injury, many professional athletes retire with various degrees of infirmity. Obviously, opposition to athletic steroid use has never been about health. It is about using government to create an image of "fairness" for the sports industry.

Rick Collins, perhaps the leading authority on steroid law and author of the book, Legal Muscle, says that the stripping of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson's 100-meter gold medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, after testing positive for stanozolol, prompted the media frenzy that led to Congressional action. He explains, "The Congress of the late 1980's, intent upon 'leveling the playing field,' seems to have simply assumed that the terrible dangers of these hormones were well established, and didn't want to hear otherwise. Congress ignored the representatives of government regulatory agencies including the FDA, the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse who testified against the proposed amendment to the law. Congress disregarded the American Medical Association's position that steroid abuse does not lead to the physical or psychological dependence required for scheduling."

"It was to appease the organized sports lobby and restore public confidence in sports," Collins says, "that Congress passed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, adding steroids to the federal schedule of controlled substances.

"But the law and similar state statutes reach far beyond the Olympic and elite level athletes for which they were originally intended. Most people using steroids non-medically are not competitive athletes. The laws criminalize 'cosmetic' and unprescripted therapeutic steroid use for all mature adults, including the millions who are using them illegally simply to lose weight and gain muscle, and prevent physicians from prescribing steroids to healthy adults for such purposes.

"Did the approach work on the original problem? Well, here we are -- many years, numerous hearings and one sweeping law later -- back at 'square one,' still wrestling with the same problem of steroids in sports. Worse still, the legislation actually created new problems, such as a massive foreign black market, a culture of professional ignorance within the medical community, and a slew of arrests and prosecutions of mature non-competing users for personal use possession."

Germane to this issue are all the usual anti-prohibitionist arguments explicated by William Buckley, founder of the pro-legalization National Review magazine, Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, and George Schultz, President Reagan's adviser who served as both secretary of state and the treasury. The difference, of course, is that other drugs with similar possession penalties lack the dramatic therapeutic attributes of steroids.

Certainly, the sports business has the right to try to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs, just as it has the recreational sort, gambling, spousal abuse and infidelity. All efforts should be made to keep them out of the hands of children, but you don't have to be an economist to predict that nothing will end steroid use in professions where only a slight, marginal increase in strength or speed can translate into tens of millions of dollars. For athletes who can easily afford to jet down to a Tijuana sports clinic for legal, discreet bimonthly injections of designer steroids, invisible to testing technologies, performance-enhancing drugs are not just rational, they are a competitive necessity.

Though I have no experience with illegal steroids, I have taken the less powerful but legal, under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1993, "prohormones." These precursors convert in the body to muscle building androgens and, especially when dealing with my spinal condition, they have been enormously helpful in building the cushion and support that prevent extreme pain and the loss of nerve signal. Many of my middle-aged and older friends have, similarly, used over-the-counter prohormone products to deal with the increasingly difficult goal, due to reductions in natural hormone levels with age, of maintaining muscle and healing from training and other injuries.

Because a thriving market exists for these products, there are a wide variety of prohormone products and many are actually more useful than those available by prescription, if you can find a cooperative, knowledgeable doctor. For instance, short-acting testosterone or nandralone precursor products, created by the bodybuilder scientist who has pioneered the field of steroidal prohormones, Patrick Arnold, provide the benefits of FDA-approved patches and injectables but are far less likely do "down-regulate" natural testosterone production.

Unfortunately, the President's steroid lecture has added considerable wind to the sails of those calling for a ban on these legal OTC "performance-enhancing substances." Sen. Joseph Biden introduced the "Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2003" that would expand the current list of 27 illegal compounds to over 50 compounds and expressly named isomers, plus all their salts, esters and ethers. The thriving over-the-counter prohormone or "andro" market would be destroyed.

"Significantly," Collins notes, "the bill ... would direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to consider raising the punishments for all steroid offenses.

"If the bill is passed, the likely result will be that tomorrow's penalties -- including prison terms -- for possession of andro products will be significantly higher than today's penalties for possession of traditional anabolic steroids. It's also likely that state laws will be amended to conform to the new federal schedule, empowering local law enforcement to arrest mature adults and prosecute them in state court for possessing even a single prohormone tablet. The bill already has at least five co-sponsors, including influential Senators Orrin Hatch, Tom Harkin, and John McCain."

As millions of customers have been introduced to the benefits of androgen supplementation through legal prohormones, one can safely assume that many will turn to the black market for replacements if they are banned. One can also assume that this is exactly what organized criminals wish to happen.

Lastly, I think I should point out that my father died from wasting-related complications when a series of ailments prevented him from working out, as he had done his whole life. I was unsuccessful in convincing him or his doctor to use steroids to counter his failing strength and immune system, largely because of the prevalence of the sort of anti-steroid hysteria that has been encouraged by the president's comments. I believe firmly that he would be alive today if our society had not put the interests of professional sports ahead of the people's.

Posted by: brodus

Yes, there are certainly a lot of therapeutic applications of steroids! That's what they were designed for. I have a friend who was born with a debilitating disease, and steroid therapy has enabled him to walk and live a semi-normal life.

Steroid therapy for age-realted detrioration, physical injury, and HIV wasting, however, is very different from a healthy, physically fit adult injecting anabolics for performance enhancement or pure vanity.

Posted by: camarosuper6

Nice article.

Posted by: Prince

Quote:

Originally posted by brodus
Steroid therapy for age-realted detrioration, physical injury, and HIV wasting, however, is very different from a healthy, physically fit adult injecting anabolics for performance enhancement or pure vanity.

Is it?

What about everything else that we do for vanity reasons?

Posted by: ponyboy

Valid point.

How is steroid use any different from plastic surgery? Or hair plugs, penile enlargement, and other things like that?

Posted by: brodus

What are you trying to say? That just because modern ethical standards have devolved into a sludge of non-sequiturs, that somehow that makes things okay?

You can't see the difference bewteen disease and vanity? You honestly think your poor self image weighs the same in an epistemic scale as a kid who is born with a spine in the shape of a "z"?

Where did you learn to think? That's a horrible line of reasoning. Do you even know what a "valid point" is, philosophically?

At the end of the day, a guy walking around with hairplugs and a nose job is still bald and he knows it and anyone close to him knows he believes himself to be an inadequate human being. Worse, someone who marries him for his looks has another thing coming when the baby is born.

You know what I hate in life? People who use other people's behavior as a justification for their own purient interests and lack of rational decision-making powers, in order to mask inadequacies within themselves that they lack the willpower to overcome. The population of such people is growing exponentially. When they have achieved critical mass, and successfully redefine all knowledge/history/ethics to their own ends, that is the day of recknoning, when all truth is undone.

Posted by: Prince

Here is what I believe: I supposedly live in a country that is labled "the land of the free", therefore I should be able to stick whatever the hell I want into my body.

Instead I have to adhere to laws the are motivated and passed based on special interest groups, in a nutshell money. The entire ephedra ban was a joke.

If the FDA is truley protecting the health of the public why in the hell are cigarettes and alcohol legal? They kill 100's of thousands of people every year. Because they are heavily taxed, that is why.

The only reason that steroids are illegal and PH's will soon be illegal is because some heavy hitters like the NFL, MLB, Olympics, etc. want them made illegal.

Posted by: brodus

Agreed that greed drives bans--cigarette and booze is best example.

I was with you until you compared vanity motivations with health-related motivations. Those are two different things. If you don't see that, I am sorry. Maybe you can explain your case to a biomedical ethics board of any college to see how you fare...unless you think they too are part of the conspiracy, bent on supressing your lifestyle.

I know you're smart enough to know that "land of the free" is a just motto, not an open-ended guarantee, and the only truly free society would be an anarchic one, and then no one looking for steroids would be alive to talk about it b/c they'd already be killed by the genetically superior. Freedom is a concept on a contiuum. You're only as free as the prescribed limits defined by the need for stability of the society you live in. In a democracy, you have to get involved to advocate change.

You can't have it both ways--if you want freedom and social darwinsim, then you have to be ready to fight for what you want, as your opponents surely will. You can call it a conspiracy or whatever, but where are all of the people advocating vanity steroid use in D.C.? Could it possibly be that that's seen as an unethcial position to the majority of Americans? If so, should they all have they all have to forfiet their ideals just because a handful of people aren't comfortable building mass wthout steroids? That wouldn't be fair, would it? Wouldn't be "Free?"

It's partly why recreational drug users don't have much political representation--their inherently too lazy to get involved in the process to the level that non-drug users are. "Damn, it's always the man pushing me down." NO, it's the drug users' own lazy ass who checked out of life.

If you're so concerned, form a pro-steroid lobby and try to advocate your position. That's what everyone else does with every other cause.

Posted by: Prince

See the link in the top left corner of this board and in my signature?
USFA: Your Freedom is Our Business!

Last year I sent off around 5 letters to DC, I got one response back.

I also posted an article on my main site last year (Feb. 2003): it is here!

I also posted this thread last February as well: Congress to Ban Steroid Precursors (Prohormones) in Early 2003

I like to think that I am proactive and not just sitting around bitching about it.

Posted by: brodus

Sorry--wasn't trying to imply you don't do anything! Obviously you do! The fact that you started this thred is proof enough. I wasn't saying you were like a recreational drug user either!

I was trying to make the point that, being a democracy, it wouldn't be fair or "free" to impose an unpopular use of anabolics on the majority of Americans who disagree with the statement that vanity use is the same as therapeutic use. Let's say we make them legal--that's totally unfair to any athlete who has chosen to remain clean his/her whole life. There might be some middle ground approach--like if you're a "certified trainer," or sign some waiver saying you won't compete in non-doping sports, you could be provided with steroids under the supervision of a physician. There are many problems with that, too, though.

Your argument is strong on a basic philosophical level--my body, my business. Unfortunately the world doesn't operate on this level, but on a perverse derivation of Darwinian thoery and the requirement for stability needed to raise families. Should I be allowed to inject heroin until my CNS shuts down right now? Philosophically, probably I should.

But that doesn't make a very good society. Doesn't set good examples for youth coming up. Most people begin to think this way once they crest over their 20s, get their first glimpse of mortality, and decide to try to make things better for those that come after them, not just for themsleves at their tiny spot on the space-time contiuum.

My position is that we don't make the world a better place by making it a steroid free-for-all. I could be wrong, and I'm just one person, but most people--educated or not--think this way. I feel compelled to share my opinion whenever this topic is brought up.

Lastly, hasn't access to anabolics become increasingly easy already? You can go to any "Life Extension" center and get whatever you want, can't you? I know of at least ten online sources that are legit and 100% safe so far. Fifteen years ago you had to hope you knew someone at a gym. Now you can get stuff tested for purity and everything else. It seems that anyone who has really wanted steroids for vanity puposes already gets them, so why is there a need to change a law that's hardly enforced as is? And they aren't illegal at all if they're prescribed.

Peace,

Jesse

Posted by: Prince

Okay, but actually I don't think steroids should be a legal OTC drug either.

I do think that a person of 21 years of age should be able to go to an Endocrinologist and get an Rx for steroids if that is what they want to do.

This way "real drugs" are being used, not some fake and/or dangerous black market crap, the person can be monitored, monthly blood tests, etc. that would be part of the plan, and safe cycles planned out be a knowledgable doctor.

Posted by: brodus

Cool, we agree then! I wasn't sure what you meant!

Isn't it that way though?

I thought people can pretty much get anabolics perscribed if they say the right thing?

I agree, we'd have a lot less problems if they blood levels and stuff were regularly monitored and cycles were planned, etc.

I guess what we all fear/hate is the handful of dumba$$e$ that ruin good thingd by going too far with them. It's that pesky human condition that spoils so many good things....just think how much shorter your air travel times would be if the WTC was never attacked by planes!

Posted by: Prince

Quote:

Originally posted by brodus
Isn't it that way though?

I thought people can pretty much get anabolics perscribed if they say the right thing?

oh no!

there HAS to be a legitimate medical reason for testosterone to be Rx'd and evevn then it will be no where near a cycle to cause growth, just HRT.

Posted by: brodus

What about those "Life Extension" centers in California?

Or is that just ridiculously expensive?

Posted by: Var

Quote:

Originally posted by brodus
What about those "Life Extension" centers in California?

Or is that just ridiculously expensive?

Are you talking about steroids or HGH???

Posted by: brodus

I thought you could get both at those centers? I remember reading an article about a guy who got test and somatrope for "aging," and he was only 40. I'll see if I can find a link.

Posted by: Var

Could be. From what I've read, HGH is "somewhat" easy to get at those places (very expensively), but you have to have a medical reason like AIDS for the steroids.

Posted by: brodus

Here's just one example:

http://www.theantiagingdoctor.com/

You get the HGH for aging, and TEST for sexual health.

He places 40 as the sign up age, but I'm that's variable.

This one:
http://www.antiaging.com/

Administers test and HGH for "andropause" (i.e. the male version of menopause).

Here's what you can get:

"Our real expertise is providing a total replacement program based on sophisticated free and total (protein bound) blood steroid hormone levels that allow us to accurately see the total cascade from cholesterol to Progesterone, DHEA, cortisol, three estrogens and testosterone. When combined with thyroid, glucose, insulin and growth hormone measurements, we can derive a comprehensive picture of your present imbalance."

Posted by: Prince

Even if you got HRT it's not going to be at a dose high enough to be anabolic.

Posted by: brodus

But isn't it kind of like the "medical marijuana" thing?

I mean, yes, you're supposed to have a medical card to get dope in California, but from what I've heard, it's an easy process to clear.

Now it would be really crazy if anabolics were more regulated that dope...although you can't OD on weed and you don't inject it...unless your stupid or really, really high.

Posted by: brodus

Okay, that makes sense. HRT isn't at the levels needed for bodybuilding.

Posted by: Var

Quote:

Originally posted by Prince
Even if you got HRT it's not going to be at a dose high enough to be anabolic.

I was gonna say the same thing. If they give you enough to get you into the mid or even upper range of normal test, you're still nowhere near where a cycle would put u.

Posted by: Prince

Right, they will give you enough to make your T levels like a 20 year old male, which is great, but will not do much from a bodybuilding perspective.

Posted by: brodus

Wow--sorry for not knowing, but how high do you take test levels on anabolics? Like many factors beyond your youthful peak?!

Posted by: brodus

And is it possible for the newer PHs (M1T and the recently posted info on other new methyls) to even touch real anabolics then, if they do indeed take test levels that high?

Posted by: Prince

M1T is a real anabolic steroid, just legal.

Posted by: brodus

That's what I figured. From everything I have read, from how fast it shuts down the testes, and from how low dosage/fast fx are.

At $10 a bottle, who needs illegal steroids!!

Posted by: Var

Quote:

Originally posted by brodus

At $10 a bottle, who needs illegal steroids!!

Someone who wants to inject test to stack with the legal orals.

Posted by: Prince

Quote:

Originally posted by brodus
At $10 a bottle, who needs illegal steroids!!

if you like using an oral and you respond well to M1T you do not really need illegals.

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