I had a moment while watching football today, most of my most brilliant moments are while watching the Chicago Bears play, that I had a full on rant about why the government should give us the right to buy steroids legally.
With that idea I have the obligation to touch on the other side of such a thought and what could be done to help the movement. The worst example I have experienced during my life was the unbelievable amount of High Schoolers that juiced long before they should have. For the sake of anonymity I call this school All-American High, at AAH I played soccer, not much steroid use amongst my peers there, but the football team was a whole other topic. I thought the fact that juicing at 18 on my part was horrible.
There was a kid named Louie who i played Pop Warner Football with when i was 13 and Louie was about 130 lbs and was a pretty lean kid. Well I transferred to AAH ( All-American High for those of you just tuning in) my junior year, 3 years later.
Well when welcomed by an oh so monstrous 250 pound barbarian I was clueless to such a man’s identity.
Low and behold my friend Louie had grown significantly, though puberty is an accomplished transformer of boy to man, I was quite suspicious.
The also incredible fact was Louie wasn’t the largest man on the team. There was an obvious outbreak of Anabolic Fever and most of the football team had it. My initial thought was how could a coach be oblivious to such an occurrence. Only to realize that he wasn’t oblivious he just didn’t care.
Next my mind wondered to another thought, why hasn’t anyone stepped in and help these clueless teens? The answer was pretty simple, they were winning high school football games. But at what cost? Louie for example, ended up a total of 5′6 tall and played only Division -II Football because they said he had D-I skill but he was just too short to play linebacker at that level. Next up for my friend Louie was bodybuilding for a short time before blowing out both knees squat ungodly amounts of weight. So now he is 28 years old walks with a limp and never completely recover from the injury, so his once exceptional physique has become a fat dump. I think he is one of many casualties of “The Dark Side Of Juicing”. This is what happens when self indulgences isn’t backed by basic knowledge and precaution. This is really a fixable problem if handled in a proper way. This meaning that education at every level of sports is a good start and not the usual bullshit teachings of steroids are bad, end of discussion. I feel an approach that is similar to Sex Ed. in high schools would work, where you actually discuss the individual steroids, there purpose and there dangers. All the while giving the speech that steroids should not be used by high schoolers, but if you are going to do them this is the safest way. Preach abstinence and pray for intelligences, is much more feasible than complete avoidance. My friendly advice for all that read this and are not yet legal to drink, DON’T DO IT!!! For the rest, research before you do it and always take proper precautions ( blood work , educated dosages , time on = time off including PCT , etc). Take care of yourselves we are only guaranteed this one life we have before us.