A hot button issue in sports today is steroid use, most notably anabolic steroids or as the sporting world refers to them as PED’s (performance enhancing drugs). I don’t and have not used steroids in my lifetime and probably wouldn’t let or encourage my children to use them.
With that being said, I don’t have negative opinions about them or about the people who use them.
The Problem is Excess
With our tendency to under educate ourselves and overly consume anything and everything in sight has created the general perception that steroids are horrible.
I am not a doctor, nor have I done a dissertation on the many kinds of steroids or their uses, but I feel as though they get a much worse reputation than they deserve.
This statement is not based on fact, but if steroids were to be taken in moderation and under medical supervision then I’m sure that people could find benefit without harm.
In fact you never hear people talk about anyone who is prescribed and helped by anabolic steroid usage. Doctors have had success with helping HIV patients with weight gain and muscle growth, people with anemia, and women suffering from osteoporosis.
Anabolic steroids were created to promote the growth of skeletal muscle, not to feed people’s vanity of becoming a modern day Adonis.
Abuse is Abuse
Alcohol consumed at a moderate rate over one’s lifetime can be done with little to no side affects. If you were to abuse alcohol just like anyone who abuses steroids, then you will suffer the consequences.
The problem has to do with society telling us it’s ok to consume as much alcohol as we would like, just as long as we don’t get behind the wheel of a car possibly endangering lives.
The truth is that more people are likely to suffer from the side affects of alcohol abuse than from steroid abuse. Since alcohol companies are big business in this country we turn a blind eye to anyone doing so over the age of 21.
The two major side affects with steroid abuse are heart and liver problems, which are two of the many things you will surely suffer from if you abuse alcohol. Since alcohol abuse to the body is slow progressing somehow that’s ok with society and is accepted as a part of everyday life.
MLB Feeds Misconception Fire
In 2003, Major League Baseball went on what I like to call the “Fear” campaign. MLB pretended to be surprised that 5-7% of their athletes where using after conducting tests.
The reason I call it the Fear campaign is because instead of educating people about what it could actually do, they called everyone out as cheaters and created commercials with crumbling statues to scare kids.
MLB likes to play dumb and act as if they didn’t know what was going on. I find that hard to believe; in 1994 baseball had a 232 day work stoppage causing almost 950 games to be cancelled including the post season.
For the next few years baseball took a hit in attendance, television ratings, and marketing appeal to America’s youth. Then in 1998, the chase for Rodger Maris’s single season home run record between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa took place. Many people refer to it as the summer that saved baseball.
The next season MLB was capitalizing on it with a campaign “Chicks Dig the Long Ball”. More and more players were coming to spring training looking like NFL linebackers and less like the traditional baseball players which were tall and lean.
MLB Should Thank Steroids
Baseball claims that steroids gave them a black eye; I think it’s the other way around. Before all these baseball records started falling the average guy didn’t really care about steroids, but now we all look at anyone who has used them as though they were criminals.
Before anyone who reads this gets bent out of shape about my opinion let me get one thing straight, if sports want to make them illegal then that’s fine, anyone caught taking them should be punished.
Personally I never enjoy baseball more than when balls were flying out of the park. MLB isn’t making commercials that say “Chicks Dig the Long 1-0 Games”.
The words I have tried to focus on are abuse and educate, because if we focus our efforts on educating each other on how to properly use these substances in return we will see less abuse.