The Jacked-Up Truth About Steroids

Attention, all grandstanding politicians, disgruntled sports fans, and anti-drug crusaders: don't waste your time trying to fight steroid use. You have a better chance eliminating caffeine from white-collar workplaces than you will compelling professional athletes to abstain from drugs that can legitimately make them stronger, faster, and more resilient. Likewise, it is beyond naive to expect bodybuilders, actors, models, and other professional (and amateur) narcissists to refrain from using drugs that can exponentially improve their physiques by promoting muscle growth and burning fat. The War on Drugs has been a failure in suppressing even those purely recreational drugs with the most ghastly side effects. The government cannot possibly manage to effectively outlaw any narcotic with the universal utilitarian appeal of anabolic steroids -- who doesn't want to be stronger, faster, tougher, and more physically appealing?

Anabolic steroids are drugs derived from the hormone testosterone that can be taken in a variety of formulas and methods of distribution, including orally, topically, and through injection. By increasing the level of testosterone in the human body, steroids promote protein synthesis and cellular growth in muscles, leading to an increase in muscle mass and strength and a decrease in the body’s fat content. When combined with a vigorous exercise and diet routine, steroid consumption can lead to exponential increase in a user’s strength, speed, size, ability to recover from injuries, and the definition of his physique. Anabolic steroid use nowadays is often combined with the consumption of Human Growth Hormone, another naturally occurring hormone that promotes cellular growth in muscles.

As shown by the doping revelations of world-class athletes as disparate as Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong, Evander Holyfield, and Marion Jones, steroid use is a ubiquitous feature in modern professional sports. It is not hard to understand why: steroids to a top athlete can mean immortality-granting world records, tens of millions dollars in salary and endorsement deals, superstardom, and an extra five years playing the sport they love. On the less glitzy end of the spectrum, steroid use is often necessary for even a great athlete to keep his job when competing with other athletes who are already doping. Anyone who expects professional athletes to resist the urge to use "performance enhancing drugs" when unimaginable fame, fortune, glory, and even their basic employment rests on their performance is to hold them to a superhuman moral standard accepted as realistic nowhere else in American society.

The dozens of major athletes who have been caught are therefore a tiny fraction of the total number of users. Sports leagues' drug-testing infrastructure and procedures are woefully outgunned by modern doping technology. Between all of the world's professional sports, there is a trillion dollar global market for technology that untraceably makes athletes bigger, stronger, faster, tougher, more resilient, and more marketable. In opposition to this enormous market pressure, sports leagues put in place under-funded drug-testing programs that are neutered from the start by the collective bargaining power of players' unions and by the self-interest of league management, which is reluctant to sternly enforce rules that would expose their top stars as drug users. Even if management and players unions sincerely sought to eliminate drug use, their technological and financial resources would be insufficient to compete with the space age doping industry. For example, even if anabolic steroids were eliminated, no accurate testing for Human Growth Hormone has yet been discovered. Sports fans would be best served by making peace with performance-enhancing drugs or abandoning sports fandom all together.

Though the effective suppression of steroid use is highly unlikely in professional sports or society at large, that does not mean that steroids are not still highly dangerous narcotics. Steroids, especially in high dosages, have many serious and some potentially fatal side effects. If used in moderate dosages under medical supervision, the side affects to steroids include elevated blood pressure and cholesterol levels, testicular shrinkage, severe acne, the growth of breast tissue, a decrease in sperm count, increased body hair growth, mood swings, manic rushes of energy comparable to mild amphetamine use, a shortened temper (the over-hyped "roid rage"), and masculinization in women. High, unsupervised dosages of steroids over a period of years can result in fatal damage to the human heart; longtime heavy steroid users can expect a marked increase in the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, congestive heart failure, heart attacks, and sudden cardiac death.

The potentially catastrophic effects of steroid abuse have been demonstrated by the rash of deaths in the pro wrestling industry over the past fifteen years. Ever since bodybuilding fetishist Vince McMahon began to establish a monopoly over US pro wrestling in the 1980's, heavy steroid abuse has often been at a near universal level within the pro wrestling industry. Thanks to the business practices of promoters like McMahon, steroid abuse is a necessity for most pro wrestlers. Wrestlers are expected to maintain a cosmetically impeccable bodybuilder's physique over a never-ending, injury-laden schedule that includes no off-season or vacation time -- which is frankly impossible for most people without serious chemical help. As I reveal in my new book, Ring of Hell: The Story of Chris Benoit and The Fall of the Pro Wrestling Industry, this has contributed to deaths of countless well-known wrestlers in their thirties and forties, such as Eddy Guerrero and Brian Pillman, through cardiac ailments and related organ damage. Ask any hardcore wrestling fan: the news of yet another former TV star dying of "massive heart attack" in the prime of his life is never a surprise, just a grim anticlimax to be greeted with resignation and cynicism.

While pro wrestlers who wish to continue their careers often have little choice, there is little reason for steroid abuse to exist in society at large. Thanks to the criminalization of steroids by the government and the demonization of steroids by the media, steroid users are forced to obtain their doping fix through illegal, unregulated, and unmonitored channels as opposed to responsible and knowledgeable physicians. The only way to effectively minimize steroid abuse and its serious health repercussions would be if the media and government disseminated the information regarding steroids' truly scary side effects and encouraged those devoted users to seek a doctor's supervision. An aggressive "War on Drugs" style strategy against steroids will not affect the rate of steroid use but will result in countless unnecessary deaths, millions of dollars in profit for criminal smuggling cartels, and billions in wasted federal tax dollars.nn©2008 Matthew Randazzo V

Author Bio
Born to one of New Orleans' oldest and most colorful Sicilian families, Matthew Randazzo V is a novelist and true-crime writer with expertise in American organized crime and political corruption. He works professionally as the Senior Legal Consultant for a New Orleans commercial law firm, where he manages Hurricane Katrina rehabilitation projects.

For more information, please visit http://www.matthewrandazzo.com. nn