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Part 1
January 11, 2010, 3:49 PM
This Is What Happens to You on Steroids
Steroids make you big and strong and throw a ball like Roger Clemens. Do you know what else happens? A firsthand account from a man who will never do it again.
By Craig Davidson
Matt Mahurin
Originally published in the April 2008 issue
The needle is twenty-one gauge, one and a half inches. A hog sticker. Forty of them arrived in a package from Greece. Ever received a package from overseas? You get that puff of air when you rip it open -- air that's traveled thousands of miles. Foreign, like stepping into a stranger's house. The syringe wrapper has instructions in Italian, French, Greek, and Arabic -- not a word of English. But it's a needle. Operation is self-explanatory. I had put them out on my desk a few days ago -- an unignorable fact. An invitation. A threat.
Buck up, laddie. Fortune favors the brave.
What's inside resembles oily piss: 1 cc of Equipoise, a veterinary drug injected into horses, and 2 cc's testosterone cypionate, ten times the testosterone an average man my size naturally produces in a week.
It was going into my ass; plenty of meat there. But the sciatic nerve radiates from my hip, and if I hot-shot the junk into a vein, I could go into cardiac collapse. I tucked a bag of frozen corn beneath my underwear to numb the injection site. The hash marks on the syringe were smudged away by my sweaty hands. That couldn't be a sign of quality medical equipment, could it?
What if I died in this shitty efficiency apartment in Iowa City? I pictured the landlord stumbling upon my body, rotten and bloated. The newspaper headline: "Dumbshit Canadian Found Dead with Needle in Ass."
The needle slid in so easily, I wasn't aware it'd broken the skin. I aspirated and injected into the deep tissue. When I pulled it out, a pressurized stream of blood spurted halfway across the room.
A while back I wrote a novel. A lot of first-time novelists don't stray far from home; their stories are drawn from their lives. Holds true for me: The main character is...well, me. That's not quite true. He's wealthier, pampered, more dismissive. But his deep-seated fears, his inborn weaknesses -- those we share intimately.
My character goes down dark roads. For the sake of the book, I thought I'd travel those roads with him.
He begins to work out obsessively. I began to work out obsessively.
He joins a boxing club. I joined a boxing club.
He takes steroids. I took steroids.
The thing is, I've never done drugs. I therefore lacked the ability to spot the dealer in a room. Such was my quandary when it came to steroids. Where to buy? Who to ask? I'd heard your local gym was a good place, but I didn't have the first clue how to go about that. So I typed "steroids" into Google, which promptly introduced me to an Internet scam. I purchased a bottle of what I thought was a steroid called Dianabol. But what I received was Dianobol, which, for all I know, were rat turds pressed into pill form. Effective as Flintstone chewables.
I'll not go into great detail about how I came to possess real steroids -- or "gear," as we 'roiders call them. The whole thing makes me look as stupid as I was. Suffice it to say the process involved an encrypted e-mail account, a money order wired to Tel Aviv, and weeks of apprehension -- Had I been ripped off? Would DEA agents break down my door? -- before the package arrived, pills and ampules and six vials wrapped in X-ray-proof paper.
Anabolic steroids hit U.S. gyms in the early 1960s, courtesy of John Ziegler, the Americans' team doctor at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships in Austria. He watched in horror as his countrymen were decimated by Soviet he-men who, he later found out, received testosterone injections as part of their regimen. Ziegler teamed up with a pharmaceutical firm to create the synthetic testosterone Methandrostenolone, better known by its trade name, Dianabol.
The biological function of anabolic (tissue-building) steroids is to stimulate protein synthesis -- that is, heal muscles more quickly and effectively. New muscle is gained, in part, by tearing the tubelike fibers running the length of our muscles; protein molecules attach to the broken chains, creating new muscle. While on steroids, your muscle fibers become greedy, seeking out every stray protein molecule.
I had a misconception that being "on steroids" involved the ingestion or injection of a single substance, but that was quickly dispelled. Many steroids on their own are either singular of purpose or not terribly effective. This is where "stacking" comes in: You can put on mass (75 mg of testosterone), provide muscle hardness (50 mg of Winstrol), and keep water retention to a minimum (50 mg of Equipoise). This stack is injection-intensive: testosterone and Equipoise twice weekly, Winstrol daily. Eleven injections a week.
But that's only steroids. You need drugs to stave off the potential side effects: hair loss, gynecomastia (buildup of breast tissue due to increased estrogen, aka gyno, aka bitch tits), testicular atrophy, cranial and prostate swelling, erratic sex drive, liver impairment, hemorrhoids, impotence, cysts, acne, abscesses, renal failure. Hair loss, gyno, and testicular atrophy should be considered absolute rather than potential hazards: You simply cannot alter your body's chemical makeup so drastically without your body reacting. My own steroid cycle:
-- Dianabol (10 mg tabs, three per day for the first four weeks)
-- Testosterone cypionate (500 mg per week, ten weeks)
-- Equipoise (400 mg per week, ten weeks)
-- Nolvadex (antiestrogen drug; one to four pills daily depending on week)
-- Proviron (male-menopause drug; 25 mg daily)
-- HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin, derived from the urine of pregnant women; used during postcycle therapy to restore natural testosterone levels; 500 iu's twice weekly, administered with an insulin needle)
Some of this stuff showed up in the Mitchell report -- Lenny Dykstra allegedly bought Deca-Durabolin, testosterone, and Dianabol when he was with the Phillies, and Jose Guillen and infielder Matt Williams were both mentioned as testosterone-cypionate users. Doesn't look like it, but mine was a fairly mild cycle. Including diuretics and cutting and hardening agents, professional bodybuilders may have fifteen substances floating around in their systems at any given time. Like alcohol or drugs, a body's tolerance builds up. Top pros might inject up to 2,500 mg of testosterone weekly to produce the desired effect.
The first week of the cycle, my nipples start to itch. Onset of gynecomastia.
January 11, 2010, 3:49 PM
This Is What Happens to You on Steroids
Steroids make you big and strong and throw a ball like Roger Clemens. Do you know what else happens? A firsthand account from a man who will never do it again.
By Craig Davidson
Matt Mahurin
Originally published in the April 2008 issue
The needle is twenty-one gauge, one and a half inches. A hog sticker. Forty of them arrived in a package from Greece. Ever received a package from overseas? You get that puff of air when you rip it open -- air that's traveled thousands of miles. Foreign, like stepping into a stranger's house. The syringe wrapper has instructions in Italian, French, Greek, and Arabic -- not a word of English. But it's a needle. Operation is self-explanatory. I had put them out on my desk a few days ago -- an unignorable fact. An invitation. A threat.
Buck up, laddie. Fortune favors the brave.
What's inside resembles oily piss: 1 cc of Equipoise, a veterinary drug injected into horses, and 2 cc's testosterone cypionate, ten times the testosterone an average man my size naturally produces in a week.
It was going into my ass; plenty of meat there. But the sciatic nerve radiates from my hip, and if I hot-shot the junk into a vein, I could go into cardiac collapse. I tucked a bag of frozen corn beneath my underwear to numb the injection site. The hash marks on the syringe were smudged away by my sweaty hands. That couldn't be a sign of quality medical equipment, could it?
What if I died in this shitty efficiency apartment in Iowa City? I pictured the landlord stumbling upon my body, rotten and bloated. The newspaper headline: "Dumbshit Canadian Found Dead with Needle in Ass."
The needle slid in so easily, I wasn't aware it'd broken the skin. I aspirated and injected into the deep tissue. When I pulled it out, a pressurized stream of blood spurted halfway across the room.
A while back I wrote a novel. A lot of first-time novelists don't stray far from home; their stories are drawn from their lives. Holds true for me: The main character is...well, me. That's not quite true. He's wealthier, pampered, more dismissive. But his deep-seated fears, his inborn weaknesses -- those we share intimately.
My character goes down dark roads. For the sake of the book, I thought I'd travel those roads with him.
He begins to work out obsessively. I began to work out obsessively.
He joins a boxing club. I joined a boxing club.
He takes steroids. I took steroids.
The thing is, I've never done drugs. I therefore lacked the ability to spot the dealer in a room. Such was my quandary when it came to steroids. Where to buy? Who to ask? I'd heard your local gym was a good place, but I didn't have the first clue how to go about that. So I typed "steroids" into Google, which promptly introduced me to an Internet scam. I purchased a bottle of what I thought was a steroid called Dianabol. But what I received was Dianobol, which, for all I know, were rat turds pressed into pill form. Effective as Flintstone chewables.
I'll not go into great detail about how I came to possess real steroids -- or "gear," as we 'roiders call them. The whole thing makes me look as stupid as I was. Suffice it to say the process involved an encrypted e-mail account, a money order wired to Tel Aviv, and weeks of apprehension -- Had I been ripped off? Would DEA agents break down my door? -- before the package arrived, pills and ampules and six vials wrapped in X-ray-proof paper.
Anabolic steroids hit U.S. gyms in the early 1960s, courtesy of John Ziegler, the Americans' team doctor at the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships in Austria. He watched in horror as his countrymen were decimated by Soviet he-men who, he later found out, received testosterone injections as part of their regimen. Ziegler teamed up with a pharmaceutical firm to create the synthetic testosterone Methandrostenolone, better known by its trade name, Dianabol.
The biological function of anabolic (tissue-building) steroids is to stimulate protein synthesis -- that is, heal muscles more quickly and effectively. New muscle is gained, in part, by tearing the tubelike fibers running the length of our muscles; protein molecules attach to the broken chains, creating new muscle. While on steroids, your muscle fibers become greedy, seeking out every stray protein molecule.
I had a misconception that being "on steroids" involved the ingestion or injection of a single substance, but that was quickly dispelled. Many steroids on their own are either singular of purpose or not terribly effective. This is where "stacking" comes in: You can put on mass (75 mg of testosterone), provide muscle hardness (50 mg of Winstrol), and keep water retention to a minimum (50 mg of Equipoise). This stack is injection-intensive: testosterone and Equipoise twice weekly, Winstrol daily. Eleven injections a week.
But that's only steroids. You need drugs to stave off the potential side effects: hair loss, gynecomastia (buildup of breast tissue due to increased estrogen, aka gyno, aka bitch tits), testicular atrophy, cranial and prostate swelling, erratic sex drive, liver impairment, hemorrhoids, impotence, cysts, acne, abscesses, renal failure. Hair loss, gyno, and testicular atrophy should be considered absolute rather than potential hazards: You simply cannot alter your body's chemical makeup so drastically without your body reacting. My own steroid cycle:
-- Dianabol (10 mg tabs, three per day for the first four weeks)
-- Testosterone cypionate (500 mg per week, ten weeks)
-- Equipoise (400 mg per week, ten weeks)
-- Nolvadex (antiestrogen drug; one to four pills daily depending on week)
-- Proviron (male-menopause drug; 25 mg daily)
-- HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin, derived from the urine of pregnant women; used during postcycle therapy to restore natural testosterone levels; 500 iu's twice weekly, administered with an insulin needle)
Some of this stuff showed up in the Mitchell report -- Lenny Dykstra allegedly bought Deca-Durabolin, testosterone, and Dianabol when he was with the Phillies, and Jose Guillen and infielder Matt Williams were both mentioned as testosterone-cypionate users. Doesn't look like it, but mine was a fairly mild cycle. Including diuretics and cutting and hardening agents, professional bodybuilders may have fifteen substances floating around in their systems at any given time. Like alcohol or drugs, a body's tolerance builds up. Top pros might inject up to 2,500 mg of testosterone weekly to produce the desired effect.
The first week of the cycle, my nipples start to itch. Onset of gynecomastia.
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