Steroids have been widely demonized by mainstream media and culture and glamorized by the internet- but what are the real harms, and is it possible to use them safely?
*definitely not medical advice
Steroids have been widely demonized by mainstream media and culture and glamorized by the internet- but what are the real harms, and is it possible to use them safely?
*definitely not medical advice
Hello….
This is gay bro shit-
And a podcast that occasionally talks about the war on drugs, but not usually.
And you can call me
So today is a big giant hornet’s nest because I’m going to be talking about Anabolic Steroids- And I’m going to do my best to approach this topic with nuance and balance because most publicly available information on this is entirely demonizing or largely positive and the truth, like so many things lies in the middle.
I grew up in the 90’s and was very much a product of the DARE program which sought to scare us off all drugs- and the way that steroids were portrayed was very sinister, with a lot of dire warnings about what would happen if we were to try them-
But As I got older I was more exposed to other sources of information and one of the touch points for me was an excellent documentary that came out in 2008 called Bigger Stronger Faster by the filmmaker Chris Bell.
And if you haven't seen this movie, I definitely recommend it even though its 15 years old now- But my intention with this conversation is to do the same thing the movie does- which is to take an honest look at anabolic steroid usage but update things to where we are in 2024, and specifically look at this topic through a gay male lens.
But before we do that I do need to state, yet again, that I am not a doctor, and this not medical advice, just a summation of my research into the topic and things I’ve learned from listening to people with a lot of lived experience in this arena.
And depending on where you live, we are talking about substances that are frequently illegal, or at the very least controlled-
But I also think that we as a society have to be unafraid to have honest conversations about drug use because legal status doesn't always reflect the societal harm or dangers of a substance. And we also know that the criminalization of drugs has largely been used as a tool to police and incarcerate people of color and poor people.
And to state my position up front- I think the harms of steroids have been very overblown and I think it is possible to use them safely under certain circumstances, but that they are inappropriate and unnecessary for most people. But there's a good chance you’re going to use them anyway so you might as well know the real risks and results.
There will also be a lot of crossover from the previous episode I did on Testoreone- because Testosterone is the original steroid so much of what applies there applies here, but because there are 20 or so other commonly used anabolics that all have different effects and actions there's going to be a bigger range of possible outcomes.
So first- some definitions
Steroid refers to a compound with a specific structure of four fused rings- They act as signaling molecules that tell cells to do certain things. It's a pretty broad category of chemicals.
Steroids are some of the most commonly used drugs in the world- but most specifically the class of drugs known as corticosteroids that impact your immune response, act as an anti-inflammatory, as well as a variety of other functions.
We're not talking about this class of steroids, although some of the side effects are similar
We're talking about the anabolic steroids, whose function is to promote tissue growth. And they don't just make you bigger and stronger, but those are the results we care about.
The first anabolic steroid discovered was of course Testosterone, and as we talked about previously, this was discovered in the 30s by a group of scientists in Europe and it took them a short amount of time to figure out how to produce it and use it as a drug. They also started to experiment with deviations of the chemical as part of the push for new drugs during this time period. Really the fuck around and find out era of pharmaceuticals.
Here in the West, we knew about testosterone of course, but we didn't yet know about other derivatives that had similar effects.
What we did know was that after World War 2- The Soviets and other Eastern Bloc countries were kicking our asses in sports that required raw strength. Olympic weightlifters from these countries were lifting insane amounts compared to what we were doing- so it was obvious that they were up to something.
At the time there was one gym in Pennsylvania, the York Barbell club, that was producing almost all of our weightlifters, and it just so happened that the US olympic team physician, John Ziegler was one of these weightlifters. After a 1954 meet in austria, where the americans were trounced by the ruskys- he happens to ask one of the Russian coaches what they were doing to win- and after a few drinks the Russian reluctantly admitted it was testosterone.
Ziegler returned home and started experimenting on himself and the other weightlifter at the gym- and sure enough, they all got immediately stronger. But they didn't like the side effects so he began looking for something else. And eventually he stumbled on a derivative called Metandienone, which they began marketing under the name Dianabol in 1958.
Now the history from the Eastern Bloc is a bit lost, so we dont know exactly what they were up to over there during this time, but from the Western perspective Dianobol was the first artificial anabolic steroid.
Soon enough they became widely used by strength athletes but they also quickly discovered some unfortunate side effects including liver damage. We’ll get into that later, but it wasn't until 1976, almost two decades later that the drugs were banned by the Olympic committee.
But during this time the drugs began to be used widely by athletes in a broad range of sports, and most notably, in the bodybuilding world where it had become a mandatory tool for achieving maximum size. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man who dominated bodybuilding competitions in the 70s before pivoting to become an action star and republican governor, has admitted to using Dianabol, although he is still a bit cagey about the quantities he was using and probably downplaying their role in his success.
And there's a ton of history of bodybuilding during this time available so I don't need to get granular here other than to say that basically, but the late 60’s almost every competitive bodybuilder was using.
Meanwhile, Dianabol and other drugs that were developed later did have some legitimate medical usage. Most notably steroids were given to burn victims and ellderly people to aid in tissue regeneration and reversal of muscle loss. And to this day some drugs are still approved for this and other medical purposes.
Notably in the 80’s and 90’s one of the main uses of Anabolic steroids was the prevention of muscle wasting in patients with AIDS. And while they did not prevent death from the disease they certainly prolonged lifespans and some HIV positive people who were lucky enough to live through this era have claimed that the usage of steroids was a major factor in their survival.
I was very young during this time, but I vividly recall the images of Aids patients withering away in their hospital beds until they looked like living skeletons. This was the images we all saw during this time and it was a degree of bodily horror we hadn't really seen since in the Western world since the end of World War 2 and the nightmares of the holocaust.
So anything that could prevent this waiting away was a godsend.
And this is, I think, where usage starts to become widespread among gay men in particular. We have one set of men who are actively sick and trying to extend their lifespans by any means necessary-
And then we have a second set of men who are still healthy. But these men now have an incentive to look as healthy as possible to make it visibly apparent that they do not have the disease. Working out, and having a lean, muscular look was a way to telegraph their status as one of the lucky ones. And in doing so to make themselves look like safe potential partners.
Of course, many of these men were already infected and would later die of the desease, but because humans are bias prone- this was an effective way to continue to exist in the gay world and be seen as desirable. And this is still our default desirable asthetic, long after HIV has become a manageable condition.
The gym started to replace the gay bar as the default third space for queer men. In the gayborhoods of large cities, there was always one or two gyms where the clientele was overwhelmingly gay men. And as time went on some of these gyms took on the attributes of queer nightlife spaces with loud pumping dance music, sometimes live DJs, juice bars and cafes, and cruisy spaces like locker rooms, saunas, and steam rooms that replaced the bathhouses.
And in gay porn the Jock became the dominant asthetic- almost certainly because that image projected health and vitality and a lack of desease. Also notably around this time porn stars became primarily tops or bottoms only, where previously most porn stars had been versatile.
But this reinforced the dominance of the masculine, muscular male as the superior example of desirability.
And we also know from the body dysmporhia episode that another important aspect of empahsizing muscularity in queer people was that it gave an illusion of physical safety because we were less likely to be attacked for being queer if we looked physically imposing.
We also had the rise of the gay circuit party- which I plan on doing a while episode on- but these are massive mutli day parties with thousand of attendees who generally dance shirtless and adopt the same muscular asthetic. Steroid use became dereguer to be accpeted onto this party scene. And of course we alos see a strong connection developing between anabolic steroid usage and the usage of other drugs like methamphetamine, ketamine, ghb and mdma and it has been shown in at least one study released in 2019 that anabolic steroid users are three times as likley to use meth and mdma than non steroid users.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajad.12865
To be clear, I dont think there is any evidence that taking steroids causes someone to be more likley to take other drugs- steroids dont lower your inhibitions- so whats more likely going on there is is the type of person who is more willing to take a chance on using steroids is more likely to be the type of person who would use other ilegal drugs becuase they’re less risk averse more addiction prone before any drug usage even comes into play.
Back in the straight world- after a series of sports doping controversies, the US Congress added Anabolic Steroids to the Controlled Substances Act- meaning they were now illegal to possess without a prescription. Because they have legitimate uses they are not banned outright, but prescriptions became less common and usage moved underground.
Up until this point, athletes and bodybuilders were using steroids they had been legally prescribed by a licensed physician- even though of course shady doctors do exist- at least it had the veneer of medical supervision.
But now steroids have become something you acquire via a dealer instead which introduced any number of other potential risks and complications to their usage.
Meanwhile the US pharmaceutical industry stopped making and supplying most previously available drugs.
As of 2024, the Only currently legal and available steroids in US are Testosterone, methytestosterone, Anadrol, and Halotestin,
There are some others that are still legal, but are no longer prescribed or distributed here such as Primobolan and Anavar.
And once these drugs became no longer easily prescriped and stopped being legally manufactured then the research into their effects largely stopped. Very few human trials have been conducted on most existing steroids so for most of these compounds we dont actually know what a safe dose would be. The one exception to this is Testoerone which is well studied-
One of the most popular steroids today- Trenbolone, was originally developed for beefing up livestock and has never been tested on humans or even used on humans in any setting other than clandestinely. So what we know about this and many other anabolic agents has largely based on anecdotal knowledge passed around between users.
In 1989 Daniel Ducahine wrote a book called the ‘Undergroud steroid handbook’ that for many years was one of the only high quality sources of information, and the book became the stuff of legend as it was secretly passed around between gymbros and bodybuilders like a scared text.
The reality on the ground was that most people were just using whatever they could get their hands on and in whatever quantities were recommended by their sources.
Meanwhile mainstream pop culture continued to push forward massive muscular bodies. We had American Gladiators, and the WWE and more recently the complete domination of the film industry by massive intellectual property franchises based on supernatural bodies. We witnesses male actors pack on serious muscle to play these characters and
In sports we got a succession of public doping scandals including the baseball home run record scandals of Bary Bonds, Mark Maguire and Sammy sosa, The downfall of cyclist lance armstrong, and most recently the mult-year disqaulifcation of the the entire Russian Olympic team for cheating drug tests. These scandals kept the public consciousness of these drugs anchiored to the idea that they were being used to cheat in sports- when the reality was the average steroid user performs and looks nothing like a professional athlete.
Gradually, with the rise of the tinternet, steroid knowledge moved out of the underground and began to coalesce on the popular bodybuilding forums beginning in the 2000s. Users began to share their compounds, dosages and cycles and what developed was a culture of “bro” science where people could become self described experts via the information they collated and their own person trial and error. Eventually these conversation moved off the forums and onto social media like reddit, and youtube. Which brings us up to today.
It doesnt take long for the average person to poke around the internet and very quickly find advice on steroid usage and only suppliers.
And no Im not going to mention any suppliers by name- but I found a bunch without really trying. And indeed That is where most people are currently getting their drugs.
So who is using in 2024?
Best estimates I could find was that between 3 and 4 million Americans have used anabolic steroids and 98% of these people were men.
Note this is all time usage and not how many people are currently using.
So just doing a little approximating here, based on the current male population over the age of 15- im getting a usage percentage of between 2.2% and 2.9%.
Again, not currently usong, but have used.
About 50% of all Americans over 15 have ever used an elicit drug, with marijuana by far being the most common at 45.7%
Meanwhile 14.2% of all americans have used cocaine, 10.2% have ever used LSD, 74% for MDMA, 5.6% for Meth and 2.3 for Heroin.
So Anabolics are used about as frequently as Heroin, half as much as meth and less than one sixth of cocaine- all of which are siginificantly more dangerous.
https://drugabusestatistics.org/
Globally it looks like the rate of lifetime usage is about 6.4% for men, when is certainly much higher than it is here in the states.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24582699/
As for gay men specifically, one study in Australia and New Zealend found that 5.2% of gay a bi men had used steroids, meanwhile one study in San Francsico’s castro district had found that 21.6% of the respondents has used steroids
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ajad.12865
Now the castro is not representative of the average queer male population so we cant use that to draw general conclusions- only we can say it seems that Gay and bi men are more likely to use Steroids than their straight counterparts. One study I found said that queer men were 5.8 times as likley than straight men to use Anabolics. Applying the numbers I gave before means that were looking at maybe 13-17% of american gay and bi men who have used steroids. Thats my extrapolation not an official statistic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3934340/
Now most people who use steroids probably arent using them for years and years, theyre maybe experimenting and doing a few cycles. But I cant find any stats to back this up- so this is all an area for potential study. But we definitely need to say the negative health consequences are generally cumulative so long term users are at more significant risk.
Culturally, when people picture the average steroid user they probably think of a teenage athlete, or professional athlete, but thats definitely not who the average user is.
According to a survey of almost two thousand anabolic steroid users from the United States, only 11% were concerned with athletic performance and 81.8% of respondent didnt even play sports in high school at all. And only 15.5% has ever competed in bodybuilding.
most respondents were looking to build muscle size and strength, and to looking good as their primary objectives.
This study found the average user was 31.5 years of age and the average age of first usage was 25.81 years old. Notably 94% of users didnt start until they were over the age of 18, And 88.5% of users were white.
More than 74% of users had completed advanced schooling beyond high school and users held bachelors degrees at twice the rate of the general population.
Moving up the education levels, more steroids users held masters, doctoras and prefssion degrees such as JDs or MDs.
77.7% held full time jobs, with 76% earning over 40,000 a year in 2007 dollars. Which would be closer to 58 thousand in todays money.
More than 50% were single and had never been married.
And perhaps unspursisingly 70.2% of respondents considered themselves perfectionsists.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2131752/
So users are overwhelmingly white, and middle or upper middle class, educated, and employed. Very much not the profile of the average user of other ilegal drugs- except perhaps cocaine to some extent.
But this profile, single, educated, professional, also matches that of the average young white cis gay man. Of course there are outliers, but were literally talking about men who look exactly like myself, a 39 year old single white gay man with a masters in business. And probably looks like a lot of you as well.
This survey also looked at what compounds people were suing and what their weekly dosages were.
So the most popular compound was testosterone with 78% of respondents
Next up was Dianbol with 64.9%
Followed by Decca Durabolin at 63.5
Then Winstrol at 56%
Equipoise at 53.9%
And Trenbolone at 51.3%
Users rated Testosterone and Trenbolone as the most effective.
And I think this survey indicated have ever used and not who is currently using, so its not like people are using all of these at once- though many people are using more than one compound simultaneously. The average length of usage was 5.53 years, and the average user used bfor 4 to 6 months out of the year. So bros be cycling.
We dont have doses for all of these compounds but we do have it for testosterone, where the average weekly dose was 797.5mg- which is definitely alot. And the highest reported doses were more than 5000mg
That being said 58% of respondents were using less than 600mg a week, which we know from the testosterone studies that 600 is the maximum dose shown to be safe, so most users are still being somewhat responsible in their usage.
Alright- so where are these drugs coming from.
As I mentioned some of these drugs are still avaialble by presciption and still manufactured for the US market- There are also prescription quality medicines available in other countries that can be imported. Thailand and Mexico are popular places to go and get these drugs becuase they are legal and readily available- but of course importing drugs puts people at consideravble legal risk and border agents are very on the look out for drugs
More likely these drugs are obtained from Underground Labs or ‘UGLs’. the raw ingredients are imported from China as powders and mixed with oils to create injectibles, or combined with other inert inegredients and pressed into pills in small labs.
I watched a few interviews with dealers, including a good once in a recent Vice documentary where they talk through this process and it seems relatively simple with some basic chemistry experience, but the dealer interviewed definitely highlighted that many people in the game dont have this experience and arent handling their chemicals properly.
The quality and dosage strength vary from supplier to supplier
with much of it being fairly good because the ingredients are cheap- but not always.
According to one study of over 5000 samples of black market steroids, 36% were counterfeit or had no active ingredients, and a further 37% were of substandard quality, meaning they were underdosed.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-13734-4
There are test kits you can buy, there are also some labs you can send samples off to but its hard to know how accurate these are. But it may be wroth it to test drugs you suspect of being inferior quality.
Its also very common to pass off one cheaper steroid as another expensive steroid. For ecample primobolan and anavar are considered fairly safe, but usually demand a high price point, so a lot of the labeled Primo available on the black market is actually Masteron while alot of the Anavar is actually Dianabol.
People traditionally people purchased from dealers they met at the gym. And this meant they were limited to whatever compounds their dealers had available, but
Currently, its more likely people will purchase from an online source and pay using crypto or wire transfer. And the quality is often very high compared to dealers.
As I mentioned before you can find any number of websites advertising these compounds for sale- and surprisingly most of them are legitimate. Not all, of course, but because the culture of bros on the internet its very easy to get recommendations for which sites are actually good. There is also literally a site that agreates reviews and ranks them.
So with this blatant highly visible sales network happening in plain site- you might wonder why the drug enforcemant agents arent going after them.
Well they have actually. In 2015 there was a massive action by the DEA called Operation Cyber Juice that led to the arrests of over 90 people and the seizure of 16 different underground labs.
https://www.dea.gov/press-releases/2015/09/01/dea-announces-major-steroid-operation
But this operation was not met with public praise, with many people commenting that it was a waist of the limited drug enforcement resources to go after steroid suppliers. And while the DEA highjlited the raid as part of an anti-doping campaign in sports, we knew from all of the available data that Competetive Athletes were not the primary users of these drugs.
Since then the DEA has not done any major actions and it seems like their appetite for enforcement has waned as their attention has largely shifted to the fentanyl crisis.
So when we talk about drugs and the law its often viewed through a framework of societal harm. However when it comes to steroids that harm has probably been greatly exagerated.
To be clear their are serious risks to individual users- which I’m about to go over- but this is not a class of drugs that generally impacts society beyond the health of individual users.
So let’s talk about the risks, starting with some of the more innocuous ones and progressing to the more serious ones.
And again, I did cover alot of these in the Testosterone episode so this might be redundant for some listeners
Hair loss: Testoerone converts to DHT, and other steroids are derived directly from DHT and this chemical is the one largely responsible for male pattern hair loss. My understanding from users is that if youre prone to baldness already than steroid use will likley accelerate the process- but if youre someone who is not prone to baldness it probably wont have this effect. So this is one reason why you might want to wait a bit until starting (among others)
Increased Body Hair- As it is often said the hair you lose from your head migrates to other parts of your body, so you might suddenly have back hair or thicker chest hair. This may not be a bad thing for a lot of people
Maculinization- In addition to extra body hair, reduced hair on your head, your voice can also deepen and other changes generally in line with becoming more masculine. For femme people this may be a undesirable side effect, but for trans and non-binary people assigned female at birth, this may actually be a benefit.
Libido- for most people steroids increase their sex drive, most notoriously Tren makes people seek out sex constantly, and often in ways they wouldnt have previously pursued. I’ve seen some posts of straight guys freaking out becuase they take Tren and suddenly start being attracted to Trans women and they’re worried they might be gay now- which is of course rediculpous becuase trans women are women- so being attracted to them doesnt make you gay. Cut that shit out.
That being said becuase steroids generally also raise your estrogen level, sometimes if that level gets too high it can kill your sex drive and your ability to get an erection. Then some people take a bunch of aromitaze inhibitors to stop this testosterone to estrogen conversion and crash their sex drive by not having enough estrogen.
Acne: DHT also plays a roll in oil production in our skin, so this is why a lot of people develop acne. Acne on the back is a pretty tell tale sign that someone is using. This is another reason why young people might want to avoid using.
Gyno- Because some testosterone is convererted into estrogen, men with a lot of testosterone will convert more of it to estrogen which can lead to the growth of breast tissue. Obviously this risk grows with increasing dosages so people who use steroids often also use another medication, such a tamoxifen or Anastrozole to block this conversion process. This is a good reason to keep doses fairly conservative as most people using for asthetic reasons probably dont want to develop breasts that have to be surgically removed.
Water retention/bloating- Similarly, increased estorgen can lead to increased water retention and bloating. So this might you look artificually inflated or swollen. And in some drugs that are used specifically for bulking you might find that what you thought was added muscle was just added water mass that goes away as soon as you discontinue the compound.
Testicular Atrophy- Because your body is receiving testosterone it will typically cease natural production and your testicals will start to shrink. Most men will see a 30-50% reduction in testicular size with continued use. But they do generally return with proper medication after discontinuing. The two drugs people use to return normal testicular function are Clomid and HCG .
Reproductive difficulty- Because your testicles shrink you also generally produce less sperm leading to potential infertility. Probably not an issue for most of my listeners, but again, in most cases fertility can be restored by using the two drugs already mentioned.
Addiction- Steroids are not physically addictive in the traditional sense. But because they shut down natural production, if people stop using them they will probably experience a dramatic crash if they dont use post cycle medications to restart production or transition to a standard TRT protocol. So this crash can lead a lot of people to resuming usage similar to how withdrawals might work in other, more physically addictive substances-
To me this reminds me of Death becomes her where Isabella Rosellin gives the potion for eternal life but warns meryl streep and that she has to take really good care of herself. So like if youre going to do this you need to have a plan in place for how youre going to come off these drugs as well and a awarenss of all these other possible risks and be proactive about them.
Tendonitis and muscle tears- When you’re on steroids your muscles will grow significantly faster then your connective tissue that supports these muscles. Where as normally your tendons become the limiting factor for how much weight you can lift, on steroids you can suddenly lift much more weight and it becomes very easy to injure or rupture your tendons. Its almost a right of passage of guys who use Tren to rupture a bicep tendon or a pec tendon. So if you start experiencing pain in your connective tissue that means you need to deload. Dont continue to push unless you’re sure you can pay for surgery and afford the downtime neccesary for recovery from an injury like this.
So now we start getting into the more freighteing side effects.
Mood disturbances- So we all know about the cliche of developing ‘Roid Rage’ in fact one of Ben Affleks earliest acting rolls was in an After School special where he plays a ghih school football player who gets roid rage- and well- does this happen? It turns out not really. Yes Testosterone can make you more aggressive but the consensus among users is that it just heightens whatever your natural inclinations are. So if youre someone who is easily angered, then steroids will make that worse, but if you’re someone who is generally peaceful, then you’re not going to suddenly turn into the Hulk or whatever.
Now In some cases steroid use can trigger mania or even psychosis. And I swear the internet is gaslighting me, because months ago I saw a study that showed a pretty high incidence of hypomanic symptoms in people on high doses of testosterone but now I cant find it and everything I can find says its rare-
I did find one study that gave men a 600mg per week dosage and found that 84% of participants had minimal psychological effects, 12% became mildly hypomanic, and 4% became markedly hypomanic.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/481565
So I think if you’re someone who has experience bipolar disorder or is dealing with an intense mental health condition then steering clear of anabolic agents is probably a good idea. Or at the very least being very conservative with your dosages.
A known side effect of many of the stronger agents, most notably Tren is very poor sleep quality, with alot of people experiencing night terrors.
Because sleep is so essential for recovery and growth to me this feels really counterproductive. I know for me if my sleep is off like two night in a row I start to really get fucked up so anyhting that really negatively impacts my ability to get decent sleep consistently is a hard no.
Now to blow up my own spot here- I’m someone with some occasionally severe mental health issues and I’ve found that testosterone doesnt really make me feel hypomanic, maybe mildly, but very managbly- but the two times I’ve tried a modest dose of a DHT derivative compound it made me feel very hypomanic. And not in a fun productive way. So it may be that for me DHT is the thing that sets me off. On the other hand numerous studies have shown that low testosterone and severe mental health issues go hand in hand- so is it better to be on some test and a little hypomanic or on nothing and barely functional? I think the answer is pretty clear.
Liver damage- Oral steroids are predominantly processed by the liver. So most oral agents are extremly toxic on the liver and can cause irreversible liver damage. Dianabol is pretty notorious for this. This is why orals are only ever recommended for short term use. Anavar is the one oral that doesnt seem to cause liver damage, but it can cause kidney issues, so this twoo is only recommended for short term use- and since your black market Anavar might actual be Dianabol its just a good idea to keep these cycles short.
So it is counterinutinvely safer to inject- but there are also injection risks. Obviously is people are sharing or resuing needles there is a significant risk of infection. Going back to our survey of users, 99% of respondents said they never shared needles or vials- and only 0.7% admitted to resuing needles- So 7% of users reported ever having an infection- which is not nothing- but comapred to other injectable drugs theres seems to be much less risky behavior occurring
Elevated blood pressure- Taking steroids defenitely elevate your blood pressure. Studies say by an average of 8-10 points, and in some people, paticularly if their blood pressure is already high this could be very dangerous. So you can go from being biorderling high to being fully high, or from hyperensive stage 1 to stage 2. This is why you see guys who are on a lot of stuff who look bright red all the time- its becuase their blood pressure is too damn high.
High blood pressure cuases kidney damage, damge to your eyes and other orgrans, and can lead to a stroke, anyurism or heart desease.
Buying a blood pressure monitor and taking mediction if neecesary is a good move if you’re going to use.
Cholesterol- Anabolics also alter your blood lipids level- they raise your Bad Cholesterol and lower your good Cholesterol. In one study of a bodybuilder they found his HDL, or good cholesterol had dropped by over 90% and his LDL, the bad one raised by over 50%.
Now after discontinuation his levels did return to the normal range- But we have to wonder if continued usage would lead to plaque building up in the arteries.
Also of note here, Corticosteroids have alot of the same negative effects, so drugs like prednisone will also elevate your blood pressure, cholesterol and lead to psychological issues. As a kid I had a corticosteroid shot that cuased me to hallucinate- which is terrifying when you’re fucking 9 years old.
Heart damage- So these increases in blood pressure and cholesterol can lead to heart damage- but more terrifying, the use of steroids can cause the muscles of the heart to enlarge, particularly the left ventricle. Prolonged Steroid usage can cause the heart to enlarge by as much as 3 times its normal size.
When bodyubulder Dallas McCarver died at the age of 26 his autopsy reveiled his heart weighed 833 grams, where the average human heart weighs 300 grams. Another famous bodybuilder who died suddenly, Rich Piana had a heart that weighed in a 670 grams. So more than twice the average size in both cases.
Now, to be clear both of these mens were using way more steroids than the average person- but it sure sounds like people are dropping from steroids all the time.
So how deadly are steroids?
One study in Denamrk looked at this, they followed up with people who had tested positive for anabolic agents three years after wards, and on average they found 1.3% of them had died, compared to 0.4% for a control group that did not test positive. This meant that the Steroid Users were 3 times more likely to die than non users.
Whis sounds bad defenitely. However, Firstly we need to recognize that coorelation does not equal causation, people likely to take steroids are also more likley to take other risks leading to accidental deaths, including the use of other drugs, this is already established- so we cant say that Steroids was the thing that killed them.
Another study looked at suspicious deaths in United States, in the period between 1990 and 2012 and were able to identify 19 deaths where all other causes of death had been ruled out. So 19 deaths in 22 years.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462039/
Meanwhile during that same period overdose deaths from other drugs, rose from 16,849 in 1999 to 41,502 in 2012
Remember when I said earlier that the US has about the same number of Heroin users as Anabolic Steroids users.
During this period deaths from just heroin were almost 2000 times more than deaths from steroids.
During this period Antidepressents were also responsible for alsmot 38,000 deaths, which again is 2000 times more deaths than steroids. Drugs that are generally considered safe and very commonly prescribed
Which is not say that Steroids are completely safe- they are not. There are very real risks that anyone using should take seriously. But the danger has been greatly exagerated.
https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
And of course these drugs have positive effects or people wouldnt be using them
Most notably people are using them to gain muscle mass, gain strength and improve body composition.
But this is where things gets really murky because, as these drugs have become ilegal or at the very least heavily controlled- most of them have not been studied independently to assess for how they quanititaviely change our bodies. So what we have is anecdotes that get passed down and spread around.
Certain compounds are said to be better for bulking, and some are said to be better for cutting. Some bloat you, and some dry you out- But because people are rarely using these substances by themselves and controlling other variables its impossible for us to say what they actually do- or what is and is not a safe dose. And I think this breeds an environment of experimentation where users are more likely to try a bunch of different compounds, often at the same time, in order to get the desired results.
So here’s my position on legalisation- These drugs are considerably less harmful than other drugs which are easier to obtain, least of all alcohol and nicotine- which are both fully legal - enforcement is a poor use of limited resources, and we would be better off being able to properly study these compounds rather than experimenting on ourselves.
And the primary reason theyve been made illegal is to control their usage in sports- when most users arent participating in sports at all. And by all means keep them banned in sports- it wont stop people from trying to use them and get away- but the genie is already out of the bottle.
And here’s the thing about sports performance- the people at the top of any given sport- didnt get there because they were using steroids. They got there becuase they had natural talent, good genetics, the right support and coaching and worked at it. If they added steroids into the mix it was likely to gain a very slight improvement or extend their careers.
Because steroids dont turn you in to a super soldier, theyr’re not a magical potion that you take once and balloon up, ripping all your clothes off in the process. They work slowly, and they work best in the presence of high volume workouts with progressive overload, good nutrition and good stress management.
SARMS- Now theres two other types of steroid type drugs we havent talked about but I’m going to cover briefly because you may encounter them in the wild or be tempted by them.
The first one is Selective Androgen receptor modulators or SARMs. these are drugs are meant to work on only some of your andorgen receptors- So an ideal sarm would probably be one that works on the androgen receptors in your muscles, but not ones in your reproductive organs. Or even more ideally one that works on your skeletal muscles only so you dont get enlarged heart muscles-
You can get these online and they usually come with a name thats some seemingly random combination of letters and numbers like MK-773, And many people look to these as “legal” steroids becuase theyre not technically ilegal in the United States and most other western countries- But the reason they’re not illegal is becuase theyre being sold labeled as ‘research chemicals’ and not for human consumption. Because they’ve never been approved for human use by any major governing body.
Now it would be pretty awesome if these proved effective- but at the moment we just dont have enough volume of evidence that they work- and anecdotally most people I’ve heard from who have used them wish they would have skipped them and just went straight to testosterone.
The drug approval process exists for a reason so dont take things that have not been approved.
The other class of drugs I need to mention are Peptides- and the two you’ve almost certainly heard of are Human Growth Hormone and Insulin- which are both naturally produced by the body and are generally taken together.
Going back to our steroid user survey we can see that 27.9% of participants reported using HGH, 21.5% reported using insulin and another 19.4% said they had used IGF-1 or Insulin like growth factor, which is another naturally occurring peptide.
These drugs need to be injected daily, or even multiple times a day in the case of insulin so these are a very intense comittment, and these drugs can get very expensive very quickly. So when you hear of people spending thousand of dollars on steroids its usually becuase theyre taking these peptides.
Now the appeal of these drugs is that they turn you into an absolute astethic marvel, and can make you grow truly huge- so these are the primary domain of the top level of bodybuilders who are just trying to get as a big as possible beyond what their body would normally allow. So HGH comes with a lot of the same risks as steroids, but Insulin is notable becuase unlikle steroids you can actually easily overdose and die. Maybe in the future i’ll do a dedicated episode to peptides but for now lets table that conversation.
So now i’m going to do the controversial thing, and advocate for a safer use model and outline what that might look like.
And I realize this may lose me credibility but I think its important
Firstly as I said near the top of this episode, Steroids are not appropriate for everyone. They’re not even appropriate for most people
I have a real short list of people who might be able to use them:
Do not use if youre competing in amateur sports or drug tested sports.
As an ancedote- I have been playing rugby for almost 20 years, and a lot of that was with gay rugby teams, and I’m aware that a lot of the players on the top gay rugby teams in the world are using- and I think thats kind of sad, because like, being on the best amateur gay rugby club is an accomplishemnt, but a very limited one. Like wohoo good or you boo, but nobody is watching this on TV. I much more respect you using just to look good.
But the reality is if youre someone whos going to use steroids, you’re probably not going to be disuaded by the risks or the dangers and I cant really say I blame you here.
The world really feels like its going to shit most of the time- so why do I care if I die a few years earlier or not. I would rather look good now…And that says morer about our society than it does ourselves.
Ok, so heres my suggestions for a safer use model. And this is based on me absorbing alot of content from bodybuilders who are advocating for this. Just to name these guys, we have Victor Black, John Jewett, Dr. Mike Isratel, Mark Bell, and Dr Thomas O’ connor. A lot of these guys have youtube channels. I am not an expert, but these men are.