Iron Game
Veteran
Written by John Romano
There is more than one school of thought regarding the downside of steroid use. While we know the exaggerated claims of horrific death and disease are largely a hoax; we cannot deny that for some people, there is an undeniable effect to their psyche. It can be as good as it can be bad, but we will ultimately only hear of the times the cops came. That being the case, I can't help but admire our community for keeping such a tight lid on the outward manifestations of using high doses of testosterone. While a jacked meathead with a bad attitude is dangerous as hell, we as a community are quite congenial.
If you go off the way steroid users are portrayed in the media, we should all have at least one murder under our belts by the time we're 28. Because the drug using bodybuilder is the poster boy for all the negative effects of steroids, we have to pay extra close attention to managing these particular side effects in public. If that is the accepted rule, then there are a few things you should never do while you're on gear (especially high doses of androgens). Better to be proactive than reactive.
The establishment's conservative view of drugs in general is as misguided as it is curiously hypocritical. If you follow politics and the current debates raging about [FONT=tahoma, verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]health care[/FONT], the economy, and political correctness in fighting terror then you can easily wonder what some of the people in charge are taking. You know they're on something! Ironically, it is those very same people who tell us not to use drugs and they make laws that turn us into criminals for using them. Regardless of the drug or its intended use, the fact that it is a drug causes alarm when someone is using them. The drugs known as pain killers, beta blockers, sedatives, amphetamines, and attention deficit preparations are whitewashed as prescription medications. The establishment deems these acceptable for use even if nothing is medically wrong with you. That's perfectly socially acceptable to the hierarchy. But not steroids, and even marijuana for that matter; those are drugs.
The establishment's long standing attitude about drugs is, as Mr. Macky would say, "drugs are bayud.....mmmmmmmmkay?" So if you are a steroid user and steroids are drugs, then what kind of person are you? A drug is deemed dangerous at the point where the general public can attach a path of death, disease and destruction to it. Then it becomes incumbent upon some faction of our ruling class to take up the cause of saving us from ourselves in the name of the children. What politician couldn't get mileage from so-called "family values morality." It doesn't get any better than that for attracting votes. Quite naturally, the anti-drug movement found its place in politics and they became dirty bedfellows. It is through this very twisted, complicated, and corrupt amalgam of alarmists and opportunists that various drugs were made illegal, criminalized, and scheduled by the DEA. When it comes to these illegal drugs (either for recreation or performance enhancement) we are preached the edict to just "say no." We are made to believe there will be serious consequence to our health and freedom if we just say "yes."
In a perfect world, enforcing this right is a higher moral commitment than enforcing the law. But the world is far from perfect. Plato once said, "[that] we not deem anything moral merely because it is legal." Unfortunately, in reality the opposite is also true and that has saddled us with some pretty stupid laws. Anyone exercising their own personal freedom to use drugs has already dealt with their own morality. The problem is, bringing it to fruition in "the land of the free," requires tap dancing around the law and pretty stiff penalties for getting caught.
If you subscribe to that reality you would probably also be the kind of person who'd want to respect the rights of those around you. I'm sure most of you would agree that it is in bodybuilding's best interest to avoid a situation that calls negative attention to bodybuilders as a group. Why give the detractors ammo to use against us?
I can't help but respect an athlete who endeavors to chase their dreams to their fullest extent by employing any means necessary: From benching shirts, belts, straps, and knee wraps; from jabbing needles into their hide; and from being jacked on stimulants and pain killers. All so they can throw down gruesome workouts one wouldn't expect of an ox. I strongly support the concept that realizing your goals has nothing whatsoever to do with following a bunch of rules or laws. Bodybuilding is a deeply personal endeavor and no one should be looking over your shoulder. Likewise, you shouldn't be breathing down anyone else's neck. Seems pretty simple, right?
That is the question that begs to be asked when we are being regulated by people who have nothing to do with what we do. They think what we do need be regulated because to them: It looks dangerous; we could pose a danger to others; or costly and problematic issues will arise for those assigned to clean up the mess we make. At the end of the day, common sense (not to mention the constitution) ensures that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves and the freedom of our pursuits. I think our forefathers knew what they were doing when they set it up that way.
In our personal pursuits - either in bodybuilding, power lifting, strong man, etc. - however far we might endeavor take it, chances are we're going to do some pretty insidious things; not the least of which is using steroids. Ostensibly, you could look no further than your own kitchen table to find someone to tell you not to do them. Not me - have at it fellas; chase your dreams and be all you dare to be. I am certainly not going to tell you not to use drugs, but I feel obligated to help you use them correctly. Just as I have always been honest in informing you of certain health and legal aspects associated with steroid use, there is a psychological end that also needs attention.
There is not much real science behind anything I'm going to tell you here; however I will deal in the realm of what we learn by doing. It has become evident that there are certain areas of everyday life that should be addressed and acknowledged before you jump on the needle. In other words, there are definitely a few things you should never do when you're intake of androgens are high and you have sensitivity to it.
One of the frequently experienced androgen side effects in some people is increased aggression. Steroid hormone receptors are widely distributed in the brain and therefore steroid use may cause a number of psychiatric symptoms. These include increased aggression, irritability, inhibition and impulsivity with impaired judgments, psychomotor agitation, insomnia, anxiety, panic, depression and suspiciousness or frank paranoid delusions. There are also the symptoms of withdrawal and dependency that have been reported in clinical studies using anabolic steroids. To whatever degree you are susceptible, if you are predisposed to this type of androgen sensitivity, it can be a bear to control - and that's only if you're aware of it. That's a fact of life for some athletes who unfortunately live in a world that doesn't well tolerate 250-pound assholes.
Most guys just don't ever get their ire up on gear. But there are a few who always seem to find that point where they're hollering like Derek Anthony, threatening people, and doing the most ludicrous things. But of the millions of guys using steroids, aggressive episodes are statistically well below the aggressive episodes induced by alcohol. However, in that small percentage, some of the episodes have been epic and thus contributed to negatively branding the users. This is most apparent if you get behind the wheel of a car in south Jersey.
Traffic...
If you are testosterone sensitive (and thus predisposed to bouts of aggression) and you live in a city such as New York or Los Angeles where there is no ideal drive time, chances are better than good you're eventually going to blow a gasket. There were always stories at Gold's Gym (Venice, Ca.) of various bodybuilders getting into it with some poor asshole who could never have imagined someone as big and nasty would be getting out of the car they just flipped off. Sometimes the beating (either to the other driver, or his car) was so severe that our bodybuilding hero was hauled off in handcuffs. The damage done could only have been perpetrated by a jacked up muscle head. Rushing around in heavy traffic; getting stuck behind someone going too slow or driving like they didn't know where they were going; getting cut off, clipped off, or flipped off; it's all going to get some of you pissed off. It is how you handle it from that point on that matters. Just stay in your car and think happy thoughts - the asshole will go away.
Relationships...
The saying goes: We always hurt the ones closest to us. And I guess you could say that's true of bodybuilding-related homicides. While not necessarily proven to have been steroid induced, the probability has been proffered and those who know the way these things can go can pretty much figure it all out. One thing is for sure, if needles are coming in, then the guns should be going out. Having a firearm in the immediate vicinity of a high-end stack is a foolish and dismal proposition. Why give a guy with a short temper on gear that option? If there is no gun in the house, then no one can use it.
Before it gets to the point where assassinating your significant other in front of the kids becomes an option, you might want to end the relationship (God forbid you should back off your cycle). Having a girlfriend/wife is great- sometimes. Sometimes it can be a pain in the ass. Better to realize which it's going to be going in, because anyone sensitive to androgens is going to find their bullshit threshold seriously lowered once they start a cycle. Never gear up behind your girl's back either, especially if she first knew you off juice. That would be totally unfair and it would also deny her of a perfectly good excuse for why you strangled her.
If you decide to stick it out, the foolproof way to make it work all boils down to just two words: "Yes, dear." Chances are slim that's ever going to come out of your mouth on two grams of test a week. So, if you're having problems in your relationship, starting a cycle will sound its death knell, usually with dramatic consequence. Once I saw mounds of some chick's belongings strewn all over the lawn just below the balcony of the apartment she used to share with her bodybuilder boyfriend. Seeing such a scene has got to make you stop and think; you can just imagine the fit that guy must have been having when he tossed all her shit off the balcony.
Catching your girl cheating on you should always give you a one-time free pass on laying someone out, especially if they hustled her knowing she was hooked up with you. The result can be spectacular if androgens are involved, as evinced by the fabled history of parking lot altercations unfolding outside of Gold's Gym throughout the 80's and 90's. And it wasn't always the dude walking around for days afterward wearing dark shades to cover up the shiner. Girls who cheat on their androgen-sensitive boyfriends better know how to box.
In the Gym
If there was ever a place to be leery of attitude, your basic hard-core gym is a good place to start. Fights that erupt in gyms can be pretty serious affairs, considering those involved would be pretty fit and pretty powerful, not to mention the close availability of a variety of lethal weapons. A little spat could turn into something dreadful and it did one afternoon back in the day up on the outside deck of World Gym in Santa Monica. Some visiting hayseed wearing a [FONT=tahoma, verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]tank top[/FONT] that revealed an acre of acne, asked a regular for a spot on some improbable bench. Not quite feeling like doing a huge bent-over row at the moment, he refused, telling the kid he didn't spot people. About 15 minutes later, the kid saw him spotting one of his buds. The kid went over and said something like, "Hey, I thought you didn't spot people." The telling off started, one thing led to another and fists start flying. The next thing I saw was the kid slumped against the weight stack of a lat pull-down machine with a lump over his eye the size of a pot roast.
Another time at Gold's, a ranting muscle head fresh off decking a gay guy who propositioned him, was still enraged when he walked up to another gay guy minding his own business in see-through tights. This second fella got kicked in the face just for looking sweet. This kind of behavior has got to be controlled no matter what. Guys tend to be a little more tolerant of each other than we are with women, but don't abuse the system. However, gay boys should never try to hustle a straight bodybuilder on an androgen load. They will get hurt.
Getting it on....
Any dude running a few thousand milligrams of test every week can tear up a whole lot of pussy. Two, three, four times a day- no problem. But if you don't have a willing partner, it could be a problem. If your girl happens to be a hot-blooded insatiable nymphomaniac, who understands that yelling at the top of her pretty little lungs while she writhes in ecstasy, then you'll be sound as a Pound. However, if your chick is of a different disposition and only likes it every couple of days and can't hang with your constant desire to bend her over the arm of the couch, you're going to have trouble. Unless you start spiking her oatmeal with Oxandrolone, you are going to fight over sex. I'd rather fight over money, the bills, the kids, the house, anything but sex. It's a fight no one wins. The only solution is for the chick to give in and never turn her man down for sex while he's on juice. I'm dead serious ladies, just do it. Because at the end of the day, he's going to fuck somebody. It might as well be you.
The Other Stuff....
Some guys will read this and wonder what the fuck I'm talking about because they are loading up two or three grams of test a week and are as docile as puppies. They don't throw fits or tantrums or punches; they tolerate waiting in lines; traffic is a good opportunity to listen to music; their women are cool; they love their jobs; and really nothing much gets under their collars. Everyone should be like you and in reality, there away more of you than there are not.
But since the possibility exists and since some androgens will affect everyone differently, we need to be aware of the possible effects. It's no secret that some drugs are notorious for their psychological side effects. Many years ago, a few of the guys in my Florida crew and I cooked up a killer batch of Finaplex from the cattle implants. By the 15th week, three of us were single and one was getting sued. Just coincidence?...probably not. But I'll tell you that once the first girlfriend got fired, it sure seemed like a good idea to the rest of us. I doubt seriously the circumstances would have been the same without the Finaplex. It's not called "divorce in a bottle" for nothing.
The common denominator here all boils down to how strong your mind is compared to your body. If you are the guy who really gets pissy on juice, then you need to be acutely aware of your propensity to do damage. You have to take responsibility for keeping your behavior in check, no matter how you might feel. It's just part of the deal.
Cashing in your aggression on the weight pile can be a hugely rewarding experience and leave you well enough spent to keep you out of trouble. Don't train like a wuss because you think the drugs are going to do all the work. On the contrary, throw down! Train as hard and as intensely as you possibly can. Hit your body so hard you have to drag it out of the gym. And always be a gentleman. It's the best thing for everyone.
There is more than one school of thought regarding the downside of steroid use. While we know the exaggerated claims of horrific death and disease are largely a hoax; we cannot deny that for some people, there is an undeniable effect to their psyche. It can be as good as it can be bad, but we will ultimately only hear of the times the cops came. That being the case, I can't help but admire our community for keeping such a tight lid on the outward manifestations of using high doses of testosterone. While a jacked meathead with a bad attitude is dangerous as hell, we as a community are quite congenial.
If you go off the way steroid users are portrayed in the media, we should all have at least one murder under our belts by the time we're 28. Because the drug using bodybuilder is the poster boy for all the negative effects of steroids, we have to pay extra close attention to managing these particular side effects in public. If that is the accepted rule, then there are a few things you should never do while you're on gear (especially high doses of androgens). Better to be proactive than reactive.
The establishment's conservative view of drugs in general is as misguided as it is curiously hypocritical. If you follow politics and the current debates raging about [FONT=tahoma, verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]health care[/FONT], the economy, and political correctness in fighting terror then you can easily wonder what some of the people in charge are taking. You know they're on something! Ironically, it is those very same people who tell us not to use drugs and they make laws that turn us into criminals for using them. Regardless of the drug or its intended use, the fact that it is a drug causes alarm when someone is using them. The drugs known as pain killers, beta blockers, sedatives, amphetamines, and attention deficit preparations are whitewashed as prescription medications. The establishment deems these acceptable for use even if nothing is medically wrong with you. That's perfectly socially acceptable to the hierarchy. But not steroids, and even marijuana for that matter; those are drugs.
The establishment's long standing attitude about drugs is, as Mr. Macky would say, "drugs are bayud.....mmmmmmmmkay?" So if you are a steroid user and steroids are drugs, then what kind of person are you? A drug is deemed dangerous at the point where the general public can attach a path of death, disease and destruction to it. Then it becomes incumbent upon some faction of our ruling class to take up the cause of saving us from ourselves in the name of the children. What politician couldn't get mileage from so-called "family values morality." It doesn't get any better than that for attracting votes. Quite naturally, the anti-drug movement found its place in politics and they became dirty bedfellows. It is through this very twisted, complicated, and corrupt amalgam of alarmists and opportunists that various drugs were made illegal, criminalized, and scheduled by the DEA. When it comes to these illegal drugs (either for recreation or performance enhancement) we are preached the edict to just "say no." We are made to believe there will be serious consequence to our health and freedom if we just say "yes."
In a perfect world, enforcing this right is a higher moral commitment than enforcing the law. But the world is far from perfect. Plato once said, "[that] we not deem anything moral merely because it is legal." Unfortunately, in reality the opposite is also true and that has saddled us with some pretty stupid laws. Anyone exercising their own personal freedom to use drugs has already dealt with their own morality. The problem is, bringing it to fruition in "the land of the free," requires tap dancing around the law and pretty stiff penalties for getting caught.
If you subscribe to that reality you would probably also be the kind of person who'd want to respect the rights of those around you. I'm sure most of you would agree that it is in bodybuilding's best interest to avoid a situation that calls negative attention to bodybuilders as a group. Why give the detractors ammo to use against us?
I can't help but respect an athlete who endeavors to chase their dreams to their fullest extent by employing any means necessary: From benching shirts, belts, straps, and knee wraps; from jabbing needles into their hide; and from being jacked on stimulants and pain killers. All so they can throw down gruesome workouts one wouldn't expect of an ox. I strongly support the concept that realizing your goals has nothing whatsoever to do with following a bunch of rules or laws. Bodybuilding is a deeply personal endeavor and no one should be looking over your shoulder. Likewise, you shouldn't be breathing down anyone else's neck. Seems pretty simple, right?
That is the question that begs to be asked when we are being regulated by people who have nothing to do with what we do. They think what we do need be regulated because to them: It looks dangerous; we could pose a danger to others; or costly and problematic issues will arise for those assigned to clean up the mess we make. At the end of the day, common sense (not to mention the constitution) ensures that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves and the freedom of our pursuits. I think our forefathers knew what they were doing when they set it up that way.
In our personal pursuits - either in bodybuilding, power lifting, strong man, etc. - however far we might endeavor take it, chances are we're going to do some pretty insidious things; not the least of which is using steroids. Ostensibly, you could look no further than your own kitchen table to find someone to tell you not to do them. Not me - have at it fellas; chase your dreams and be all you dare to be. I am certainly not going to tell you not to use drugs, but I feel obligated to help you use them correctly. Just as I have always been honest in informing you of certain health and legal aspects associated with steroid use, there is a psychological end that also needs attention.
There is not much real science behind anything I'm going to tell you here; however I will deal in the realm of what we learn by doing. It has become evident that there are certain areas of everyday life that should be addressed and acknowledged before you jump on the needle. In other words, there are definitely a few things you should never do when you're intake of androgens are high and you have sensitivity to it.
One of the frequently experienced androgen side effects in some people is increased aggression. Steroid hormone receptors are widely distributed in the brain and therefore steroid use may cause a number of psychiatric symptoms. These include increased aggression, irritability, inhibition and impulsivity with impaired judgments, psychomotor agitation, insomnia, anxiety, panic, depression and suspiciousness or frank paranoid delusions. There are also the symptoms of withdrawal and dependency that have been reported in clinical studies using anabolic steroids. To whatever degree you are susceptible, if you are predisposed to this type of androgen sensitivity, it can be a bear to control - and that's only if you're aware of it. That's a fact of life for some athletes who unfortunately live in a world that doesn't well tolerate 250-pound assholes.
Most guys just don't ever get their ire up on gear. But there are a few who always seem to find that point where they're hollering like Derek Anthony, threatening people, and doing the most ludicrous things. But of the millions of guys using steroids, aggressive episodes are statistically well below the aggressive episodes induced by alcohol. However, in that small percentage, some of the episodes have been epic and thus contributed to negatively branding the users. This is most apparent if you get behind the wheel of a car in south Jersey.
Traffic...
If you are testosterone sensitive (and thus predisposed to bouts of aggression) and you live in a city such as New York or Los Angeles where there is no ideal drive time, chances are better than good you're eventually going to blow a gasket. There were always stories at Gold's Gym (Venice, Ca.) of various bodybuilders getting into it with some poor asshole who could never have imagined someone as big and nasty would be getting out of the car they just flipped off. Sometimes the beating (either to the other driver, or his car) was so severe that our bodybuilding hero was hauled off in handcuffs. The damage done could only have been perpetrated by a jacked up muscle head. Rushing around in heavy traffic; getting stuck behind someone going too slow or driving like they didn't know where they were going; getting cut off, clipped off, or flipped off; it's all going to get some of you pissed off. It is how you handle it from that point on that matters. Just stay in your car and think happy thoughts - the asshole will go away.
Relationships...
The saying goes: We always hurt the ones closest to us. And I guess you could say that's true of bodybuilding-related homicides. While not necessarily proven to have been steroid induced, the probability has been proffered and those who know the way these things can go can pretty much figure it all out. One thing is for sure, if needles are coming in, then the guns should be going out. Having a firearm in the immediate vicinity of a high-end stack is a foolish and dismal proposition. Why give a guy with a short temper on gear that option? If there is no gun in the house, then no one can use it.
Before it gets to the point where assassinating your significant other in front of the kids becomes an option, you might want to end the relationship (God forbid you should back off your cycle). Having a girlfriend/wife is great- sometimes. Sometimes it can be a pain in the ass. Better to realize which it's going to be going in, because anyone sensitive to androgens is going to find their bullshit threshold seriously lowered once they start a cycle. Never gear up behind your girl's back either, especially if she first knew you off juice. That would be totally unfair and it would also deny her of a perfectly good excuse for why you strangled her.
If you decide to stick it out, the foolproof way to make it work all boils down to just two words: "Yes, dear." Chances are slim that's ever going to come out of your mouth on two grams of test a week. So, if you're having problems in your relationship, starting a cycle will sound its death knell, usually with dramatic consequence. Once I saw mounds of some chick's belongings strewn all over the lawn just below the balcony of the apartment she used to share with her bodybuilder boyfriend. Seeing such a scene has got to make you stop and think; you can just imagine the fit that guy must have been having when he tossed all her shit off the balcony.
Catching your girl cheating on you should always give you a one-time free pass on laying someone out, especially if they hustled her knowing she was hooked up with you. The result can be spectacular if androgens are involved, as evinced by the fabled history of parking lot altercations unfolding outside of Gold's Gym throughout the 80's and 90's. And it wasn't always the dude walking around for days afterward wearing dark shades to cover up the shiner. Girls who cheat on their androgen-sensitive boyfriends better know how to box.
In the Gym
If there was ever a place to be leery of attitude, your basic hard-core gym is a good place to start. Fights that erupt in gyms can be pretty serious affairs, considering those involved would be pretty fit and pretty powerful, not to mention the close availability of a variety of lethal weapons. A little spat could turn into something dreadful and it did one afternoon back in the day up on the outside deck of World Gym in Santa Monica. Some visiting hayseed wearing a [FONT=tahoma, verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]tank top[/FONT] that revealed an acre of acne, asked a regular for a spot on some improbable bench. Not quite feeling like doing a huge bent-over row at the moment, he refused, telling the kid he didn't spot people. About 15 minutes later, the kid saw him spotting one of his buds. The kid went over and said something like, "Hey, I thought you didn't spot people." The telling off started, one thing led to another and fists start flying. The next thing I saw was the kid slumped against the weight stack of a lat pull-down machine with a lump over his eye the size of a pot roast.
Another time at Gold's, a ranting muscle head fresh off decking a gay guy who propositioned him, was still enraged when he walked up to another gay guy minding his own business in see-through tights. This second fella got kicked in the face just for looking sweet. This kind of behavior has got to be controlled no matter what. Guys tend to be a little more tolerant of each other than we are with women, but don't abuse the system. However, gay boys should never try to hustle a straight bodybuilder on an androgen load. They will get hurt.
Getting it on....
Any dude running a few thousand milligrams of test every week can tear up a whole lot of pussy. Two, three, four times a day- no problem. But if you don't have a willing partner, it could be a problem. If your girl happens to be a hot-blooded insatiable nymphomaniac, who understands that yelling at the top of her pretty little lungs while she writhes in ecstasy, then you'll be sound as a Pound. However, if your chick is of a different disposition and only likes it every couple of days and can't hang with your constant desire to bend her over the arm of the couch, you're going to have trouble. Unless you start spiking her oatmeal with Oxandrolone, you are going to fight over sex. I'd rather fight over money, the bills, the kids, the house, anything but sex. It's a fight no one wins. The only solution is for the chick to give in and never turn her man down for sex while he's on juice. I'm dead serious ladies, just do it. Because at the end of the day, he's going to fuck somebody. It might as well be you.
The Other Stuff....
Some guys will read this and wonder what the fuck I'm talking about because they are loading up two or three grams of test a week and are as docile as puppies. They don't throw fits or tantrums or punches; they tolerate waiting in lines; traffic is a good opportunity to listen to music; their women are cool; they love their jobs; and really nothing much gets under their collars. Everyone should be like you and in reality, there away more of you than there are not.
But since the possibility exists and since some androgens will affect everyone differently, we need to be aware of the possible effects. It's no secret that some drugs are notorious for their psychological side effects. Many years ago, a few of the guys in my Florida crew and I cooked up a killer batch of Finaplex from the cattle implants. By the 15th week, three of us were single and one was getting sued. Just coincidence?...probably not. But I'll tell you that once the first girlfriend got fired, it sure seemed like a good idea to the rest of us. I doubt seriously the circumstances would have been the same without the Finaplex. It's not called "divorce in a bottle" for nothing.
The common denominator here all boils down to how strong your mind is compared to your body. If you are the guy who really gets pissy on juice, then you need to be acutely aware of your propensity to do damage. You have to take responsibility for keeping your behavior in check, no matter how you might feel. It's just part of the deal.
Cashing in your aggression on the weight pile can be a hugely rewarding experience and leave you well enough spent to keep you out of trouble. Don't train like a wuss because you think the drugs are going to do all the work. On the contrary, throw down! Train as hard and as intensely as you possibly can. Hit your body so hard you have to drag it out of the gym. And always be a gentleman. It's the best thing for everyone.
