Where to start?
I don't know where to start. Firstly congrats on your interest in competing. You will find it a very interesting and hopefully a very rewarding experience.
I would suggest that you spend some time with the search function on this site looking for the various topics that you mentioned. You will find a lot of information by doing that, some very good, some not as good. You will have to sort through it.
Probably THE best way to get started on the right foot would be to contact someone like Skip (
[email protected]) and see what he might be able to do for you. Having the assistance of a good coach would be tremendously helpful to you, especially the first time through. His help is not free, but by getting his help you can save yourself a lot of trial and error which can be much more expensive.
Since I do not know if you have been using A/S or not I will say that "drugs" or "starting a cycle" as you put it may not be something you want to do. That depends on your training history, where you want to go with this and many other factors.
If you are serious about competing and doing as well as you can you will have to be organized and have a solid plan laid out. Jumping in without a decent plan will probably lead to frustration and dissappointment. Do some homework, develop a plan that will work for you and set some realistic goals. If you do that and stick to the plan you will probably have a good experience.
If the "plan" that the guys at your gym give you sounds too easy - it probably is. This is not brain surgery, but it is far from "easy". If you have been training for 13 years you should know that by now. Good luck!
