Do It Right Without STEROIDS!
says George Kaye, Physiology Editor
MANY BODYBUILDING CHAMPS TAKE DRUGS, SHOULD YOU?When only a handful of stars took steroids, the controversy over their use hardly mattered. Fewer than three dozen bodybuilders and weight men were involved. But now that anabolics have seeped into every gym, "Y", and locker room, and are being thrust down the throats of thousands of athletes and bodybuilders by coaches and trainers a fullblown crisis is at hand. Some experts claim steroids deliver a miracle of size/strength gains. Others say inevitable side effects can irreparably damage a young man's life. On these pages two MUSCLE BUILDER experts offer their research data for you to read carefully. The choice you make cannot be reversed. |
When Muscle Builder assigned me to refute Gene Mozee's article praising steroids I wanted to refuse. It seemed stupid and unnecessary, for there are situations in life so obviously bad they require no explanation. No writer can make a legitimate dime noting the dangers in motorcycling 100 mph on wet roads or running naked in the snow with pneumonia. These things are so patently bad it's an insult to be told not to do them.
Taking drugs to build muscles is no different and I wasn't about to research hundreds of well-documented anti-drug pieces to rebut the Mozee effort point-by-point. I'll tell you what I think, however, and as an eight-year editor of Muscle Builder and Mr. America I think my opinions and experiences have some weight. I know as much about the iron game as any veteran, perhaps more. I love it and devote myself to barbells. And with Joe Weider and the Research Clinic I always look for new, faster, and better ways to grow bigger and stronger muscles.
I have training in physiology and a keen awareness of young people and their habits, including "pop" drugs (grass, acid, heroin, etc.). So this is a straight-from-the-shoulder talk. Not clinical. Just practical.
In a pathetic way there is little difference between steroid devotees and the hapless Viet Nam veterans who are messing up their lives via deadly heroin addiction. Both use shortcuts to lighten their bag. The first wants a quick inch on the arms but isn't willing to grind out a month's work for it. The other, depressed and 10,000 miles from home, needs instant relief. But neither drug is a true shortcut. Both are mistakes. And in life you pay dearly for every serious mistake you make.
Mozee's argument gives a reasonably fair balance of opinion but remains unimpressive. In fact, using his criteria any objective (non-muscle-obsessed) person could easily conclude the opposite--that steroids are inimical to health, defeat the purpose and spirit of bodybuilding, are dangerously controversial even to medical men, and should be scrupulously avoided.
But the guaranteed acquisition of some extra rapid size and strength gains blinds many muscle men and it is easy to succumb to steroids' lure no matter what the toll. However, does it make sense? This question isn't whether steroids work -- they do -- the question is: Are they worth it? Do they add up? Do they justify the chance, the risk of evil side effects? And can you make equal gains through diligent training? (You can! Definitely!)
This is what is so amazing: bodybuilders are undisputably the most health-conscious of all people. They eat with the care of a diabetic . . . they spend hundreds of hard earned dollars on supplements to make absolutely certain their nutrition is up to par. They train faithfully and arduously day in, day out. They go to compulsive extremes to avoid colds, to get plenty of fresh air, sunshine, and good living. Sometimes they resign terrific jobs, leave girl friends or wives, forsake their parents, family, and friends, and move thousands of miles to muscle havens for the sake of better training. And then, after all this, to take a chance on gambling away the big apple by taking a pill -- an unnatural, laboratory-produced commercial money-maker, a semi-researched, controversial, and constantly legitimately maligned substance -- that some gym flunky tells them will do magic.
The same guy who would pay $1.00 a loaf for fresh bread, who would risk social ostracism by not smoking, not drinking, and hitting the sack at 10:00 p.m. who would keep his wife off medically-certified birth control pills calling them alien to human chemistry, who would whip his kids for fooling with harmless marijuana, will also gulp steroids indiscriminately for a lousy inch on the arm he could easily get with a little extra training.
How nutsy must one be to risk liver damage, testes atrophy, prostate damage, kidney disease, potential cancer, and all the other problems Mozee generously admits are possible. It's not worth the trouble and there are medical freaks roaming around hospitals, research (human guinea pig) centers, and college dorms to prove that. It's hypocritical. It's insane. What's more important: the inch or your ability to father kids, five more pounds or kidneys that can poison you, a bigger prone or a functioning liver? Take steroids and risk being the strongest eunuch in the cemetery.
Mozee doesn't tell you about the Texas discus thrower who's now neither a man or a woman. Irreversibly. Or a bald 14-year-old bodybuilder in Connecticut. Or the Arkansas shotputter who will be dead by the time you read this; in his hospital there's two kidney machines and three victims of kidney disease.
And this bullshit about medical supervision making it all right. Doctors know as much about the psychology of a bodybuilder's mind as about the electronic circuitry of an Apollo liftoff. How can you bring your 16" arms, 46" chest and 25" thighs to a physician and say, "I feel too skinny. . . I prone only 275, that's so little. . . I want steroids to become big and strong. . . how about supervising me?" You'll be thrown out on your ass towards the ward with the barred windows. And besides a doctor is no good for this. You need the whole package. A laboratory for constant exams. Bi-weekly urinalysis, blood-testing, an endocrinologist, a genito-urinary specialist. The whole shtick to keep a constant watch. Nobody can afford this. You won't do it and you'll take pills indiscriminately. And indiscriminate self-medication is always the passport to self-destruction.
So Mozee hems a little. Let's go slow, a couple weeks at a time. And let's put only advanced men on steroids. (Which is like saying let's just be a little bit pregnant.) Eighteen-inch arms will separate the user from the non-user. Like hell. Let's jolt those eighteens up to twenty in little spurts.
But what do we do with the 14-inchers? They have a lot more incentive to grow than the big boys. The monsters are just months away from a Mr. America entry but the kids have years to go. Let's compress those years, right? Let's overlook the advanced-men-only requirement. No one's looking, no one cares, not even us. Let's hustle a whole bunch of sneaky blue capsules from the local bloated steroid freak and gobble them like candy. Whee. . . look at my arms grow -- 15"! . . . 15½" . . . hmmm, what's this pain in my gut-nothing . . . 16"! Uhuh, I got the voice of a choir boy and all my pubic hairs are falling out. . . and I can't get a hardon . . . 16½ "! . . . gosh, maybe I oughta stop now -- I mean a girl would look funny with 20 inchers.
A little common sense please. Drug abuse is completely contradictory to the spirit of bodybuilding. This is supposed to be a natural, health-bearing activity. Something to aid life, and make its physical aspect easier, increase longevity, and amplify visual attractiveness. Bodybuilding was not meant as a vicious dogfight where every little bit. . . every fraction of a point must be eked out at any price. You are not struggling for toeholds on Mt. Everest, or battling lions in the Coliseum. You are simply a guy out to look and feel radiantly healthy and enjoy life. Do you really think chicks on the beach know the difference between 16- and 16½-inch arms or whether your weight is 170 or 175? Can they tell? Do they care? You're already better built than 99% of all men on earth. Must you risk your health and future for .001 % more.
For 50,000 years of homo sapiens development and 100 years of recorded muscle-building we got along fine without drugs. Steve Reeves, all time # 1 on everybody's hit parade, never even touched an aspirin. Reg Park, at 43, crushed Draper at the Pro. Mr. U and never saw a drug in his life. Paul Anderson, strongest man who ever lived, squatted 1200, back lifted 6250, push pressed 560, all 15 years ago, never heard of drugs. . . Apollon had 21" arms in 1890, no drugs. . . Leroy Colbert, first Weider-trained 20" arms 1958, no drugs... Dave Draper again, 21" arms in 1964, before steroid popularity. . . Chuck Ahrens, the legendary super monsterman, much bigger than any drugfreak will ever get, 24" arms, 60" chest, and little fat, 1960. Never went near a drug. You don't need it. Your size and strength will grow. Drugs are only a seedy shortcut. And a destructive one.
Mozee's comment about steroids creating the absolute level of human performance is demonstrable nonsense. In lifting and powerlifting only superheavies, heavies, and perhaps mid-heavies habitually take drugs. Lifters in lighter divisions cannot gain weight recklessly or else they'll be in the next class. But the records of these non-takers show up as greater achievements pound for pound than the big guys. 303 lb. featherweight presses without steroids, 415 lb. middle jerks without steroids impress me more than mooses' 450-500 pound lifts. Ultimate performances come from ultimate athletes, not average guys temporarily made champions by artificial means.
This can be proved another way. At the Drug Championships (i.e., 1970 world lifting meet at Columbus, Ohio) it was no secret that nearly all leading lifters were planning to load up on another kind of drug, amphetamines, for a quick boost, just before their competition. But the now famous disqualification of so many men in the three lightest classes following tests after the lifting alerted the bigger guys and they dumped drugs. You think this change in game plan would see their lifts decrease? No stimulants, no big lifts, right? Wrong! Nine approved world records flashed up plus plenty of near records, and even close attempts at breaking the new records. And all the record-setters cleared urinalysis. They did it purely on guts and muscle. Not drugs.
There's also a lot of philosophical arguments militating against steroids. In the heavy field events, shot, discus, hammer, it is generally agreed the bigger and stronger a guy is the further he'll throw. How about being better trained? Doesn't anyone care about working hard to perfect superior form any more. Harold Connolly threw the hammer 231 feet ten years ago (still a world class toss) when he had the greatest technique ever perfected and without a fraction of his present strength. But his throws in later years when he was a moosy member of the Westside Barbell Club were not nearly as good.
Where does one draw the line between an ethical aid to performance and an obvious illegitimate step beyond? Sixty years ago amateur athletes were weekend jocks and the first big lunge forward was to train daily and religiously.
"Ken doesn't play fair; he trains every day. How can we beat him?"
"Well, I guess we gotta train every day too."
Then weights and food supplements came along.
"Ken's tough to beat because he's bigger and stronger than we are. He throws and lifts.
"Gosh, do we have to lift too? What a drag."
Now we're in the third stage. Drugs.
"Didja hear?. . Monsterman just flung the discus outta the stadium. Says drugs helped him."
"Oh no. You mean now we gotta pollute ourselves to keep up? OK, gimme the Anovar and the stomach pump."
So today, even as many athletes take drugs, often begrudgingly, to maintain the pace, what other dimensions in competitive madness can we look forward to?
"Hey, Sherman's being hypnotized into thinking he's a rocket launcher."
"Migod, OK, call up Dr. Lugosi. Maybe he can freak me into being an atomic bomb."
or
"Larry just had all his limbs amputated and gorilla arms and legs grafted on. Now he can shotput 100 feet."
"Groovy, if I give him a few bananas will he tell me where I can have the operation?"
Obviously there is no end. As science and medicine develop tools to aid genuinely suffering individuals, athletes, coaches, and trainers, will pervert them for their own use, often to the detriment of the competitor. Already this is making an unsporting mockery of competition between the drugged and non-drugged. And of the comparisons between this generation's ill-deserved records and bygone athletes' ones. Sports federations are well aware of these inequities and are developing the tools to detect and outlaw steroid use just as they did with stimulants.
How about the American athletes' obligation to beat Communists at any cost even if it means taking drugs with regret. This will become unnecessary. A few more scandals like Columbus will end the sporting public's admiration of recordholders who win at any price. The familiar Please pardon him Your Honor, he only stole the car because he was under the influence of alcohol will be echoed in Please pardon him sporting fans. He was influenced by drugs and a corrupt and ungentlemanlike desire to win. He won't do it again. Records will be listed in drug-aided and non-aided categories, and any time a no-drug star exceeds drugged athletes' marks he will be a true hero.
The public's disgust with the drug menace -- all drugs, heroin, acid, speed, even household remedies -- is so high that anyone accused of steroid involvement will be held contemptuously and scorned.
Let the champions break the rules of common sense, good health, ethics, morality, sportsmanship and maybe even personal conscience for a few pounds, an extra inch, a big toss -- all gains they can acquire honestly with harder work.
You don't have to be in that bag unless you're the type who thinks it's fine to cheat on exams, use shrunken tape measures, lie about personal records, or do other crummy things to falsely gratify the old ego.
Which is what it all bops down to . . . If you're secure in your own head you don't care what the other guy is doing. Your own thing is good enough. If he wants to shaft himself that's his problem. But if you have no inner calm, if losing to a confirmed cheater is too much to take, if you must be victor at the cost of self-decay then you have a problem neither steroids, amphetamines, or any other drug can cure.
You need a psychiatrist.