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Steroid look builds demand for drugsDate: 08.12.2002
Posted by: Anabolic Info Team United States
Patrick Keogan wanted to be big, like the men with the huge bodies and rippling muscles he saw at the gym.
"I was training like an animal," he said, working out seven days a week. But he seemed to have reached his biological limit: 5 feet 8 inches tall, 150 pounds.
"Finally, it dawned on me," he said. Those huge men at his gym who insisted they were simply lifting weights were dissembling. "There was something they were not telling me," Keogan said. Thus Keogan, a 30-year-old salesman who lives near Boston, entered the world of anabolic steroids — testosterone and other drugs that act like it, which can build muscle, fast.
He soon was taking 4,000 milligrams of testosterone a week, which he bought from dealers at his gym. (A man his age normally produces about 35 milligrams a week.)
Within 20 weeks, he weighed 200 pounds. He was massive. People stared, he said; crowds parted. Acquaintances no longer recognized him.
Now, as more and more men, and some women, are seeking large, chiselled bodies, more are learning the bitter secret of that look: It almost always takes some chemical assistance, from drugs that are often illegal but are readily available.
Anabolic steroids are nothing like cortisone creams for itchy skin or corticosteroid injections to reduce inflammation. These are drugs that build muscle.
The use of steroid drugs has spread from weightlifters to bodybuilders to elite athletes to high school and college athletes, as well as to groups, like gay men and gym aficionados, who just want to look better.
It is hard to quantify their use — U.S. surveys of adults' drug use do not ask. By all accounts, a small minority of Americans use the drugs, but medical experts are concerned. There are suspicions — but very little solid evidence — that anabolic steroids and drugs that act like them can lead to serious long-term effects, including heart attacks, strokes and cancer. They suppress sex hormone production, which can cause infertility. There are stories that the drugs can turn placid people violent. There are concerns that in some sports, those who want to compete have little choice but to take them.
The personality change was what worried Keogan — he quit after jumping out of his car to argue with another driver in a fit of rage, leaving his car to drift away. Now his body has shrunk to its former size, and he struggles to lift weights that were once a warm-up to his real lifting.
Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, says it should not be surprising that people keep taking the drugs. They do build muscle, decrease fat and improve athletic performance. And society sends mixed messages: No one should take steroids, but athletes should be winners, and everyone should strive to be strong and muscular.
"There is some degree of denial and hypocrisy with the use of these compounds," Bhasin said. "We discourage it by punishing a few people now and then to show our displeasure, but we tolerate their use. We haven't taken a stand as a society, and the widespread use of these agents is reflective of our ambivalence.''
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