Steroids: good or bad?
Are steroids good or bad? Here’s a recent article that says they are bad:
From the artice:
In 16 weeks, Craig Davidson, a Canadian novelist, transformed himself into a hard-as-nails hunk by injecting illegal steroids. He loved his new body - but not the hideous side-effects. In this graphic account of being a ‘roider’, he recounts his hellish journey..
“Hellish” sounds bad, and the article backs that up:
I had a misconception that being ‘on steroids’ involved the ingestion or injection of a single substance, but that was quickly dispelled. Many steroids on their own are either singular of purpose or not terribly effective. This is where ’stacking’ comes in: you can put on mass (75mg of testosterone), promote muscle hardness (50mg of Winstrol) and keep water retention to a minimum (50mg of Equipoise). This stack is injection-intensive: Testosterone and Equipoise twice weekly, Winstrol daily. Eleven injections a week.
But that’s only steroids - you need other drugs to stave off the potential side-effects, which include: hair loss, gynecomastia (build-up of breast tissue due to increased oestrogen, aka gyno; aka bitch tits), testicular atrophy, cranial and prostate swelling, erratic sex drive, liver impairment, haemorrhoids, impotence, cysts, acne, abscesses, renal failure. Hair loss, gyno and testicular atrophy should be considered absolute rather than potential hazards: you simply cannot expect to alter your body’s chemical make-up without your body reacting.
My own steroid cycle went as follows: Dianabol (10mg tabs, 3 per day for the first 4 weeks); Testosterone Cypionate (500mg per week, 10 weeks); Equipoise (400mg per week, 10 weeks); Nolvadex (anti-oestrogen drug; 1 to 4 pills daily, depending on week); Proviron (male menopause drug, 25mg daily); HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, which is derived from the urine of pregnant women; used during Post Cycle Therapy to restore natural testosterone levels - 500iu twice weekly, administered with an insulin needle).
Believe it or not, it’s a fairly mild cycle. Including diuretics and cutting and hardening agents, professional bodybuilders may have 10-15 substances floating around their system at any given time. Like alcohol or drugs, a body’s tolerance builds up over time; top pros need to inject 2,500mg of Testosterone or more, weekly, to receive any effect.
What are the effects of all this medication?
Or was I just chubby and still out of shape? I didn’t know. I gave them a jiggle. I couldn’t tell if it was fluid build-up or actual flesh. Could a person grow new flesh overnight? I didn’t want tits - it went against the purpose of the exercise. I gobbled twice my daily allotment of anti-oestrogen medication. A week’s worth of double Nolvadex doses got the gyno under control. But by then my hair had started falling out.
I have a scalp of unruly, bushman-like red hair. While I’ve never been keen on the colour and its tendency to coil into ringlets when grown out, there has always been plenty of it. Then one morning I was showering, I looked down at my shampoo-foamed hands, and saw dozens of red strands between my fingers. Soon they were everywhere: on my pillow, between my teeth, falling into the pages of books while I read. I became hyper-aware of the way wind felt through my hair: colder on the top of my skull, where there was less protection. And not just my head: the hairs on my arms and legs, even my testicles, were falling out. Not a single follicle seemed firmly moored to my skin.
Then, one sleepless night (the steroids also triggered insomnia) my testicles shrunk. Testicular atrophy is the most well-known side-effect of steroid abuse. It’s an inherent irony: here you are trying to turn yourself into an über-man while part of the most obvious manifestation of your manhood dwindles before your eyes.
And then it gets worse. It really is fascinating in a train wreck kind of way.
On the other hand, you can find video articles like this one featuring Bryant Gumble:
In the introduction is states flatly:
As frequently evidenced by officials nationwide, Americans, where drugs are concerned, rarely choose logic when they can opt for hysteria. Case in point: the recent hoopla over steroids. In light of the media excess, the public pronouncements, and the wailing in Washington, one would assume that the scientific evidence establishing the health risk of steroids is overwhelming. But its not. On the contrary, when it comes to steroid use among adult males, the evidence reveals no fire, despite all the smoke…
This video is talking about the bad side, and gets pretty graphic:
Then there’s this from MTV, which chronicles the experiences of three “real people” on steroids:
- True Life: I’m on steroids part 1
- True Life: I’m on steroids part 2
In the following article, a middle age cyclist tries a combination of human growth hormone, EPO, anabolic steroids and testosterone and reports on his results, which are pretty positive:
The test results:
I was riding a tandem bike with my pal Bob Breedlove, an ultracycling legend from Des Moines, Iowa. Bob called me out of the blue in June and said he wanted to do the PBP on a tandem—as he had three times before—but that his regular riding partner had bailed. Bob liked to ride long and fast; he’d celebrated his 50th birthday the previous summer by riding across the United States in nine and a half days.
About five hours into the ride, Bob mentioned casually that he preferred doing the race on a tandem, because the heavier bike made it so much more difficult. “A course like this is terrible for a tandem,” Bob said happily. “All the hills! You’d do it much faster on a regular bike, no doubt about it.”
But we muddled through. I felt shockingly strong until the final 200 kilometers, when my stomach started to shut down. Unaccustomed to the aero bars on the tandem, I’d also developed agonizing saddle sores. These were typical woes of ultrariding, but through it all, my legs and heart felt fine. Five months earlier, I couldn’t have imagined riding this far and feeling so strong. We finished the 1,225-kilometer ride in just under 76 hours—sleeping only twice for a few hours. The next morning, if it weren’t for my saddle sores, I could have easily done it again. Obviously, Dr. Jones’s program had worked.
But he points out: “And I would never touch steroids again, unless I had some specific medical need. It’s all just too powerful, too strange, and it’s hard to read a list of the side effects and not feel like you’re playing Russian roulette.”
photos of the effects of steroids