Investigative Story on the benefits of steroid use

Another piece for Waddle and his depth reporting class. And, what'll you know, another A! My humility must be refreshing for you. Written in December of 2005.

You Juice, Too

Some take steroids to run faster, some to jump higher, some to get bigger muscles. You juiced to stop your post-nasal drip.

By Matt Hooper

I’ve taken steroids and so have you.

Really, you have.

Most of the time, you and I didn’t even know we were doing it. They were given to us and we took them. You probably didn’t ask any questions.

Your body probably shows no ill side effects.

Go on, check for yourself.

Is your back covered in fields of acne? Is your hair retreating to the back of your neck? Do you speak in a baritone? Experiencing any violent mood shifts?

Me neither.

You’re not ashamed of what you did and neither am I. In fact, I’ll do it again. Not because I want to, but because I have to. And you will too.

I have juiced and so have you.

***

I, like most sports fans in recent years, find it almost impossible to surf channels, eavesdrop on talk radio or crack open the sports section of the local newspaper and not find a reference to an athlete “abusing steroids.”

On Dec. 2, 2004, The San Francisco Chronicle published the grand jury testimony of New York Yankees’ first-baseman Jason Giambi. In it, Giambi admitted that he had been juicing since the 2001 season and that he had received his performance-enhancers from Greg Anderson, the personal trainer of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

Now for those of you who don’t follow the apple-pie American sport of baseball, Barry Bonds is about to shatter one of the sports’ most hallowed records. He is just 48 home runs away from overtaking the venerable Hank Aaron as the all-time greatest home run hitter in a sport defined by the long ball.

When he was 37 years-old he hit 73 home runs. More homers in one season than any other player in the history of the game. That was 2001, the same year that Jason Giambi began ingesting the juice. Talk radio enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists rejoice in the ongoing debate of whether or not those two facts share any connection. Bonds continues to deny he has ever taken steroids.

Then there’s Bill Romanoski. The former NFL linebacker was the poster child for how to prepare one’s body for competition in the most brutal of sports. Sixteen seasons playing one of the toughest positions on the gridiron and “Romo” never ever missed a game due to injury. He was revered as a “never-take-a-down-off” kind of player.

And he cheated.

Romo admits to Scott Pelley, a correspondent for the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” that he ingested THG, a steroid compound known on the street as “the clear.” He received the potion from Victor Conte, who allegedly supplied Greg Anderson with his cache of “gym candy.”

The self-proclaimed “hardest-working S.O.B. that ever stepped onto the field,” the man who spent nearly $200,000 a year on supplements, treatments, specialists and trainers to keep his body intact and well-tuned, admits he overstepped the line.

“I compromised my morality to get ahead, to play another year, to play two more years, to win another Super Bowl,” Romanowski confessed.

This is what Americans think about when they hear the term “steroids.” Athletes, rippled with muscle, selfishly abusing themselves and the sport that made them famous by going underground to acquire illegal, performance-enhancing drugs.

The abuse of the drug among professional athletes is such a prominent issue that Congress has begun to hold special hearings on the matter. Famous ballplayers have testified in front of Senate committees denouncing the use of the illegal drugs. One player, Rafael Palmerio of the Baltimore Orioles, was later suspended for violating Major League Baseball’s steroid policy.

Stories are told and retold at these hearings of high-school kids trying to get an edge on the playing field by purchasing illegal steroids, only to suffer irreversible nerve damage, or even death, as a result of the juice. Jason Giambi himself suffered through several irrational medical ailments before coming clean about his juicing problem, including a benign tumor and a nagging intestinal parasite.

***

All the news there is to hear about steroids is bad news, or at least, so I thought.

They were the topic of conversation one morning while I was on the phone with my mother, Linda. She’s a registered nurse and lab coordinator at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, which houses one of the nation’s most prestigious medical schools. It was revealed during this conversation that I was to be lumped together with the Giambis, Palmieros and Romanoskis of the world. For I, too, had juiced.

She told me that several years ago, during a nasty bout with sinus pressure and pain, I was prescribed Prednisone, which treats, among other ailments, allergic reactions pertaining to the nose and eyes. Prednisone is an anti-inflammatory, an immune system suppressant, and, to my surprise, a steroid.

I had juiced, and, although I wasn’t head-to-toe in rippling muscle as I thought I would be if I ever touched the stuff, it did help my immediate situation. My head cleared, so did my nose, and all was right with the world again.

So are steroids more common than most would like to believe? Can they even be classified as beneficial? Wikipedia Online reveals the following factoids:

If you had asthma, you could take Prednisone to help your clear airways of inflammation.

If you had Crohn’s Disease, an inflammation in the digestive tract, Prednisone could sooth the flare-ups.

Suffer from arthritis or an injury that causes inflammation? Then you could be given a hydrocortisone shot. It too, is a steroid.

If you had psoriasis, you could run down to the local drug store and pick up a tube of cortisone cream. It’s a steroid that is cheap, effective and legal to purchase over-the-counter.

Vitamin D is a steroid. The same essential vitamin that promotes bone strength and prevents osteoporosis, helps fight several different types of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, mental illness, heart disease, arthritis, tuberculosis, and yes, psoriasis and Crohn’s disease, is a part of the steroid family. It can be found in fortified foods, such as vitamin-enriched milk, eggs, and some fishes.

It is naturally produced in your body when you are exposed to sunlight.

***

So what’s the difference between these beneficial drugs and the performance-enhancing substances that allow records to be broken under false pretenses?

First, they are a minority in the general steroid population. Dr. Rebecca Greenwood, an assistant professor at UAB’s renowned nursing school and a registered nurse, explains that “gym candies” make up a tiny percentage of the drug class itself.

“I would say that there are probably 50 to 100 drugs on the market that have some kind of steroid component,” Greenwood said. “But the percentage of performance-enhancing steroids is very small, maybe 10 percent.”

The steroids that make-up that 10 percent are generally known as anabolic steroids. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, these drugs are closely related to the male sex hormone testosterone, which aids in stimulating muscle growth.

When combined with regular gym workouts, muscle growth is enhanced even further, as muscles are able to recover faster and more workouts can be crammed into a shorter period of time.

Bodybuilders and other athletes will typically ingest the drugs via a method known as “cycling,” wherein the steroids are taken in several doses during a set time frame before being stopped and started again. Some users will take a variety of anabolics at one time to gain the most mass, a process known as “stacking.”

But the risks that accompany anabolic abuse are not to be taken lightly. According to the NIDA, steroids can cause cancer risks to skyrocket, as well as the threat of tumor development. The skin can develop a yellowish tint, cholesterol and blood pressure can spike, severe acne can break out and body tissues can withhold large amounts of fluid. Men can suffer from breast enlargement and testicular shrinkage. Sperm counts can drop and so can hair counts. Women can experience male-pattern baldness, enlargement of sex organs, a deeper voice and the emergence of facial hair.

With all of these side-effects, the majority of which are well-known among the general public, it is no wonder that steroids have been saddled with a bad rap. But while bodybuilders and ballplayers are injecting themselves with harmful steroid substances in order to achieve greater muscle mass or a league MVP trophy, the medical profession is using them to quell inflamed joints and facilitate organ transfers.

“Steroids are life-saving for many people,” says Greenwood. “Doctors use steroids, in most cases, to relieve inflammation and also to reduce the action of the immune system. There are many types of patients who need that.”

Transplant recipients fall into that category. When a donor organ is placed inside a body that needs that new organ, the body, despite the apparent need, can simply reject the part and shut it down. Drugs are administered for the duration that the new organ is in the body in order to prevent this from occurring. Steroids are among the cache of pills.

“The reason that the transplant population is on steroids is that the drugs blunt the response of the immune system so that it will not attack the new organ,” Greenwood explained. “It is very important; they would not be alive without them.”

Greenwood also listed some common ailments that steroids can be prescribed to treat.

“For patients that have bronchitis and asthma, Prednisone and other types of steroids can be prescribed to reduce inflammation in the airways,” Greenwood said. “For a sinus-type infection you might get a steroid in the form of a nasal spray.

“Any injury, such as a skeletal-muscular injury, that causes inflammation can have steroids prescribed to treat it. Something like arthritis can be treated with steroids.”

According to Greenwood, most steroids are prescribed for a short period of time and, consequently, the chances for harmful side effects are slim and none. But in the case of a transplant recipient or someone with chronic pulmonary disease, long-term use of the drugs can lead to some pretty serious consequences.

Wounds can heal slowly, the chance of infection rises, appetite increases, as does the opportunity for weight gain. Joints can degenerate and osteoporosis can develop, blood-sugar levels can jump, leading to a higher risk of diabetes. Mood swings and depression are also a possibility. But this is exclusively tied to long-term steroid use, and, even still, is not guaranteed to occur.

***

Greenwood expresses concern over the public’s perception of such a beneficial class of drugs. She said my initial shock of finding out about my prior juicing experience was nothing out of the ordinary. Her father shared a similar experience a short time ago.

“He was having glaucoma surgery and had to take drugs prior to his procedure,” Greenwood recalls. “When I told him that one of them was a steroid, he was horrified.

“The public has a very negative connotation when indeed steroids are life-saving drugs, and yes, I am concerned about that.”

***

That negative connotation takes us back to that 10 percent minority of drugs that has sports fans spouting on the airwaves, legislators searching for answers and league commissioners caught in the crossfire.

Derivatives of the male sex hormone testosterone, anabolic steroids make up the lion’s share of that 10 percent category of performance-enhancing steroids. Technically, they are known by such names as Anatrofin, Dehydropiandrosterone, Durabolin and Maxibolin. On the street they are “gym candies,” “pumpers,” “stackers,” “Arnolds,” “bulls” or “juice.” These are the drugs that make you bigger, stronger and faster. These are the drugs that prompt Congressional hearings and investigative reporting.

Anabolic steroids are older than you might think. A little research on their history at SteroidInformation.com reveals that the Nazis first started testing the drugs on animals back in the 1930s before administering them on their own soldiers during World War II. Soon afterward, athletes throughout Europe began to realize the drug’s potential and steroid use boomed. It wasn’t for several years that the effects of abusing the drugs became readily apparent.

Dave Bush knows those effects better than most. A certified athletic trainer at the sports-rehabilitation leviathan, HealthSouth, Bush has treated amateur, semi-professional and professional athletes competing in everything from high school baseball to arena football to professional wrestling. Currently the head trainer for the Troy Trojans’ athletics program, Bush describes what can happen as a result of steroid abuse.

“Besides the obvious side effects, like the acne, shrinkage of the testicles, deepening of the voice in women, steroids can lead to a lot of heart and brain disorders,” Bush said. “I mean, look at Alzado.”

Lyle Alzado was a 15-year NFL veteran for three different teams back in the 1970’s and into the early 1980s. An undersized but overachieving player at Yankton College, a NAIA school in South Dakota, Alzado figured he needed an edge.

According to ESPN’s Mike Puma, Alzado began popping pumpers at Yankton. Soon after, he started dominating at his defensive end spot, allowing for his star to shine brightly through the thick obscurity of playing in rural South Dakota. The Denver Broncos selected him in the 1971 draft as their fourth pick, perhaps not knowing what they were getting themselves into.

Alzado later admitted he was out-of-control.

“My first year with the Broncos, I was like a maniac,” Alzado said. “I outran, outhit, outanythinged everybody. All along I was taking steroids and I saw that they made me play better and better.”

He was just as dominant on football’s greatest stage as he was on one of its smallest. By 1977, he was the Defensive Player of the Year in the American Conference, but contract disputes forced him out of “The Mile-High City” and on to Cleveland. After a couple of disappointing years with the Browns, Alzado was traded to Oakland, where everybody, from the team’s owner to its diehard fans, is a few degrees north of eccentric.

He won a Super Bowl in Oaktown, but the effects of his long-term steroid abuse had already taken its toll. In 1985, Alzado suffered an injury to his Achilles tendon, which he later attributed to his rampant steroid use and which forced him into an early retirement. By April of 1992, he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The former Defensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl champion could no longer walk a straight line.

A year later he was dead.

Bush commonly uses the Alzado case as a warning when he speaks to high school kids on the dangers of abusing performance-enhancing steroids. He also relates to them the experiences he has had in treating those who abuse the drugs.

“HeathSouth gets a lot of athletes to come in from around the country, including professional WWF and WWE wrestlers,” Bush says. “They would always come in with soft tissue and muscle injuries because they are packing so much weight on their limbs that their tendons can’t support it. And this is obviously a result of being on steroids.

“So I make sure to tell the kids that I treat that by abusing these drugs they are setting themselves up to be disappointed. The long-term affects of these drugs outweighs any short-term benefits.”

***

Steroids are like a lot of medicines available to the general public today. They are remarkably beneficial: able to soothe sore throats, relieve asthma inflammation and even protect us from some cancers. Ninety percent of the steroids on the market couldn’t do a single thing to help you run faster, jump higher or lift any more weight.

It’s that 10 percent; the handful of drugs that prompt so much discussion and controversy, and not to mention ghastly side effects, that are the headliners. They are the bad seeds planted in the minds of Americans that sprout when that “s”-word is leaked over the airwaves or printed in bold-type headlines in the sports section.

Until athletes realize that the risks outweigh the rewards. Until the debate of whether or not record books should be rewritten with disclaimers has been expunged from daily sports talk shows. Until Americans realize that many steroids are a healthy part of everyday life that we all share in; that bad seed will sprout and bitter fruit will continue to be reaped from the branches of a life-saving tree.