(Digital Journal) — Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet everyone from the “Conan the Barbarians” to the “Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men.” My diagnosis: Steroids do just as bad a number on you as anything else you can cram into a syringe and jab in your ass.
“Jay,” an amateur artist and musician in his late 20s, was still physically, emotionally and financially a child. He screamed blue murder when he didn’t get his way. He collected all manner of toy and comic book. He made deliciously irresponsible love to women. And he liked to take drugs.
One day, a friend told him about the positive effects of THG: a product that was refused FDA approval, a substance that was actually the main catalyst behind the Anabolic Steroid Control Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2003. His friend also sold him on ephedrine, a legal source of speed that Chemist and Druggist magazine says has caused the untimely deaths of countless highway truckers. Jay’s buddy told him the chemical cocktail would tone his muscles, make him a tiger in the sack and finally give him facial hair. And he’d have it instantly — the only way Jay wanted anything.
The months barely went by as I watched Jay’s pounds melt off and the moustache grow out. The girlfriends changed from bookish, barrel-chested bystanders to big-breasted, beanpole beauties. It lasted a whole 148 days.
 |
The similarities between steroid use and speed, cocaine and ecstasy are really quite astonishing. — Photo by djc Features |
The first sign of trouble was the smell. Jay was fond of The Body Shop’s dewberry perfume oil, and it aptly covered his natural odours. But there was a sharp foreign funk in the air, easily discernible the minute one opened the door.
Soon his shifting moods would remind me of my bipolar father. One moment he’d embrace me with dizzying happiness, professing his love for my skills and beauty. Within hours, even minutes, he’d let loose punishing accusations and character assassinations, tearing apart the paper ego he’d built barely four hours prior.
In his happier moods, Jay would show me the “progress” he’d made in his sketchbook. It was page upon page of dense scrawls, impossible to identify as even the crudest of symbols and shapes, yet he would explain in exhaustive detail exactly what they were. I told him, as diplomatically as I could, that his time at the gym had made him weak and flabby artistically, and his comics and guitar-playing were suffering. He screamed hysterically about my perceived snobbery and snap-judgment prejudice.
By this time, Jay was covered in deep scabs from squeezing both real and perceived acne. His Prince Albert piercing (a thick metal hoop through the tip of the penis) was once a big attraction at parties — he’d pull his pants down upon request, his engorged shaft bobbing up and down, an exhibition-induced erection battling the enormous weight of the ring.
Now, Jay quickly changed the subject when talk got around to the many uses of the penis. He would do wildly passive-aggressive things to satiate his growing anger, like breaking the huge double oak doors in the front of our house. He’d slam them, sit down, realize he wasn’t satisfied, get up, run to the doors, open them and slam them again. He would repeat this six or seven times until finally the door splintered and the lock fell out like a dead eye.
Needle in the Weight Stack
 |
Strippers and trannies had been shooting the stuff for years, but when white teenagers get thrown into the mix, it’s a different ball game. This prized demographic was the reason the government threw so much money at steroid research and education. — Photo by djc Features |
My lust for knowledge about steroids started in the early 1990s, when needle exchange demographic reports started pouring in from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, showing a rise in young, middle-class white men. This stood in stark contrast to what your typical needle exchange deals with day-to-day. If it had been street drugs, the clients would be looking for 1cc points and getting progressively skinny. Instead, these boys were asking for 3cc points and getting cartoonishly huge.
The government wanted answers. If they only needed information from junkies, they could get away with asking all kinds of personal questions about drug use and sexual habits, leaving the lucky recipient with 20 bucks and a lollipop. But convincing steroid users to talk was trickier.
Somehow, I managed to persuade the interview board that I was the woman for the job, and was hired to work in downtown Vancouver for a company called Deyas, which is funded by a parent agency called AIDS Vancouver. Their biggest project was a needle exchange, but they are also housing and aboriginal rights advocates and focus on safety issues in the sex trade.
My title was Research Coordinator and if I divided my salary into an hourly wage, it worked out to $80 an hour. I reported my weekly progress to John Turvey, a big-time Vancouver political advocate and mega-manager of every outreach program involving the “at-risk” population. Turvey asked me why I wanted the position, and I said I wanted a job with a measure of integrity. He hired me after he finally stopped laughing. Later, I would discover the source of his humour was linked to the disproportionately large amount of money the Department of Health allocated for the steroid issue, as opposed to, say, safe houses for battered women.
On top of my ridiculously high salary, I received an $800 office budget. I used this money to pay someone with considerably more computer skills than I had to design a pamphlet and poster trumpeting the dangers of steroid use, as well as the HIV and hepatitis risks linked to sharing needles.
I soon immersed myself into the world of the jock, issuing surveys in local gyms, finding myself blocked by coarse tempers and a strong sense of denial. Only the non-franchised gyms would let me in, and only after many loud assurances of, “That kind of thing doesn’t go on around here.”
But I found some tasty nuggets of knowledge in the more literary side of things, like Association of Sports Medicine reports and bodybuilding magazines. Retired doctors, no longer in danger of losing their licenses, were willing to give me detailed accounts of patient deterioration. I met bouncers who thought every night was Mad Max‘s final showdown until they went to jail for ripping a customer’s nose off. Eventually, I spoke to some wide-eyed high school kids.
This prized demographic was the reason the government threw so much money at steroid research and education. Strippers and trannies had been shooting the stuff for years, but when white teenagers get thrown into the mix, it’s a different ball game. The funding was limitless, and I was easily getting paid in six months a budget equal to what many soup kitchens got in a whole year.
I, of course, gave back in spades, producing a poster that looked like a Nike ad. I did exhaustive research in pursuit of those elusive first-hand accounts. And I spread the good word as wide as the musclehead scene would permit. Unfortunately, the same gyms that hesitantly let me do my surveys drew the line at putting up posters, leaving me with high schools, nightclubs, needle exchanges and sports medicine clinics.
However, I don’t feel my work went entirely unnoticed. Recent statistics show that HIV contraction among steroid users is lower than that of any other IV users, excluding diabetics.
Hepatitis, cirrhosis and jaundice are still big problems, however, caused by toxins from the hormones combined with traces of the users’ own blood. Many steroid users resort to ridiculously sneaky tactics to avoid arousing suspicion and wind up using the same needles over and over. And because steroids require a larger syringe, it is easy to miss particles of blood when rinsing them.
Dying to be Thick
The common denominator among those I talked to was an acute case of muscle dysmorphia: a false perception that they looked small and weak. Dysmorphics are never satisfied with their bodies, even after they reach Hulk-like proportions.
And steroid users often end up with new self-esteem problems — testicular atrophy sets in within 18 weeks. With their balls shrunk to half their original size, they prematurely expel a teaspoon of semen at the slightest touch. You get female users taping down their clitorises, crying for no reason, resorting to self-injury out of anger and frustration. People become intensely mad at the world, bent on punishing something, anything, in an attempt to quell their insatiable anger.
The highest-risk group will always be teens, who already have wildly swinging testosterone levels. These kids can end up with dramatic, permanent damage: liver problems, osteoporosis, stretch marks and severe acne. We’re not talking little red spots, either. This is freak show material. Stretch marks you could irrigate fields with and acne turning into boils that leave dark, pink crevices when and if they finally heal.
The similarities between steroid use and other polymorphic drugs (speed, cocaine, ecstasy) are really quite astonishing: the euphoria, the unstable temper, the anxiousness and depression when one stops. Many women stop menstruating with steroids, like with other recreational drugs. None of these substances is regulated by any government administration, so there is never proof of what exactly the ingredients are cut with.
A large portion of steroids comes from the site of their conception, Eastern Europe. Hitler’s scientists were allegedly among the first to figure out how to chemically emulate testosterone, injecting it into their soldiers to help them fight more aggressively. Many steroids still come from what was once the Iron Curtain, where medical testing and standards are less strict. And now, thanks to the proliferation of the Internet, it’s easier than ever to buy various kinds of steroids online, plus the chemicals needed to flush them out and avoid detection.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for steroids. Men are becoming “the new women,” appearing shirtless and chiseled in magazines, music videos and movies while women tear at the waistbands of their designer jeans. Hairstyling products in drugstores are now unisex, as are hair removal products. With increased vanity comes increased insecurity.
Muscle dysmorphia statistics aren’t yet as high as anorexia statistics, but the numbers are growing. Let’s give it a few years. Perhaps image-obsessed men with volatile tempers and withered testicles will someday be as acceptable as today’s rail-thin models.
This article is part of Digital Journal’s national magazine edition. Pick up your copy of Digital Journal in bookstores across Canada. Or subscribe to Digital Journal now, and receive 8 issues for $19.95 + GST ($39.95 USD).
