Angelo Siciliano’s adopted name was Charles Atlas. He stood precisely five feet ten inches tall and tipped the scales at exactly 180 pounds. Atlas was so good at winning the America’s Most Perfectly Developed Man Contest that the promoter of the contest Bernarr MacFadden commented in 1922, “What’s the use of holding them? Atlas will win every time” (Gaines & Butler, 1982).

Now, fast forward to the year 2005. If we could magically place the mighty Atlas on the field of a major league baseball game he would look average at best. Worse yet, if we could take Atlas in his prime and stick him in an NFL game, or even worse, a professional wrestling ring, he would look like a peanut. He might even (dare I say it) just get a little sand kicked in his face. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?

Do human genetics really change that rapidly? Not on this planet. Then why are athletes so much bigger, better, and stronger than in years past?

“It must be better training routines,” you say. Not according to the late, great Vince Gironda, who purportedly could whip a body into shape faster than possibly any trainer in history. Gironda, who trained scores of top bodybuilders, and a string of actors far too lengthy to include in this article, would not agree. Well what about those big, burly, high-tech glistening chrome machines in our modern gyms? Perhaps these wonders of technology are responsible for our new improved super hero caliber athletes. Here again, Gironda tells us the answer is an unequivocal no, pointing out that he was offered nearly every new piece of apparatus on the market. To quote Gironda, aka the iron guru, “you would get more out of trying to lift the machine than work on it according to the designer’s directions.” So what is the answer?

Surprise, surprise, surprise, according to Gironda — who himself was in perfect shape and at the height of his career weighed in at 15 pounds less than Atlas — it is steroids (Gironda & Kennedy, 1984). Now there’s a shocker. And no my friend, I’m not referring to Andro, which not long ago was available at nearly any health food store or pharmacy chain. In fact, a number of athletes I have counseled were adamant that they didn’t want to take Andro because it was way too weak. Nevertheless, they said it was rumored that Andro would foil tests for other serious steroids. Hmm, I wonder why that would be so important to them?

There’s nothing new about using steroids
For those of you who believe that ingesting of steroids is new, I can only say wake up and smell the coffee. Steroids, discovered in 1935, are synthetic derivatives of the male hormone testosterone. Historians believe that the first steroid users were soldiers given the drug in WWII to increase aggressiveness. They made a comeback the 1950s when they were used by Russian weightlifters.

In 1961 top bodybuilder Bill Pearl reports that he was trying to ferret out how the Russians were so strong. His investigation led him to see a veterinarian who gave him a steroid that was used at the time to fatten up bulls. The drug worked well on Pearl, too (Rouch, 2005).

The Mr. Olympia contest is considered the most prestigious competition in bodybuilding. The first Mr. Olympia of 1965 and 1966 was Larry Scott who looked like the all-American boy you would kill for your daughter would bring home on a date. Historical bodybuilding author Rick Wayne tells us on page 44 of his classic work Muscle Wars, The Behind-The Scenes Story Of Competitve Bodybuilding (1985) that: “Protein shakes and steaks were not the sole contributors to Scott’s prize-winning physique. It was no secret that he supplemented his diet with regular doses of Dianabol, a drug manufactured by Ciba-Geigy pharmaceutical company and first used to treat burn victims and senility. It was an anabolic steroid that could potentially cause hair loss, liver damage, and atrophy of the testicles. It had been used to help emaciated World War II POWs regain normal body weight.”

Football Player Steve Courson (Courson & Schreiber, 1991) blew the whistle on his profession when he co-authored False Glory: Steelers and Steroids. In this book he calls the Pittsburgh Steelers “the steroid team of the 70s,” and estimated that 65 to 95 percent of the top lineman of the era took steroids and related substances.

Football legend Lyle Alzado passed away at age 43 in 1992 with a brain tumor, which he attributed to his drug usage. Prior to his death Alzado spilled the beans and revealed that he was ingesting $30,000 a year in performance drugs and dangerous growth hormones. Alzado admitted he began using performance drugs in 1969 and “never stopped.” Alzado was a victim of so-called roid rage in which the person harbors extremely aggressive tendencies. Alzado purportedly stated he never met a man he didn’t want to fight!

On the juice: now and then
In no way, shape or form is the problem getting any better. Rather than talking about Atlas or Gironda, let’s take Arnold Schwarzenegger as a much more recent example. At his peak as a bodybuilder, Arnold, who by his own admission did take steroids, was six feet two inches tall and tipped the scales at 235 pounds. He was seemingly unstoppable. Experts at the time suggested that Arnold had reached the limits of human physical development. Today, opponents competing for the same titles (e.g., Mr. Olympia) weigh about 50 pounds more and are much leaner than Arnold! Again, genetics? Well let’s just say I wouldn’t bet the farm on it!

Why are the steroid monsters getting bigger? Better living through chemistry. Today, athletes — rather than using one or two popular steroids like the champions of yesteryear, which was dangerous enough — are stacking (i.e., combining) all kinds of steroids and growth hormones that make the drugs taken 30 or 40 years ago look like a child’s dosage. Some bodybuilders are spending $5000 a month on muscle building drugs and taking 100 times what a physician would prescribe for a medical condition (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2000)!

What in the world does abuse have to do with all of this?
So, why do people take massive doses of dangerous steroids? Needless to say, the obvious answer is to run faster, jump higher or hit more home runs. For others, teens included, the practice is purely cosmetic, such as piling an extra six inches of intimidating rock hard muscle on your biceps.

But there is another less obvious recently discovered psychological motive. In interviews with male weightlifters it was discovered that one out of every four had memories of childhood physical or sexual abuse. When interviewing weightlifters who did not use steroids, none had such memories (National Institute Drug Abuse, 2000).

Steroids: It’s not just a guy thing
The Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Volume 69, number 1,200, featured a landmark article by Amanda J. Gruber and Harrison G. Pope Jr. The article, titled Psychiatric and Medical Effects of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use in Women, did something no previous study had ever done: it investigated the use of steroids in women. The study involved 75 women athletes who were recruited via advertisement. An alarming 33 percent reported current or past use! Of the 75 women, 65 reported extreme dissatisfaction with their bodies or what behavioral scientists call muscle dysmorphia. In this condition athletes and body builders feel small and weak even when they sport a nearly perfect body. It can occur in men and women and on the street it is referred to as “bigorexia.” Roughly speaking, this affliction is the opposite of anorexia. Worse yet, others described polysubstance abuse using erogogenic (i..e., performance-enhancing) drugs that went well beyond steroids. For the record, the general public often suffers from body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), in which an individual often obsesses about his or her looks or a given body part for an hour or more each day.

The study further indicated that 55 of the 75 women had a strong preference for masculine clothing, male pursuits, and male friends. In the article, Gruber and Pope report that one of the most significant findings was the high prevalence of eating disorders and psychiatric disorders found in the women bodybuilders.

The researchers also found a syndrome in 55 of the 75 women, who they refer to as “eating disorder, bodybuilder type (ED, BT),” which includes a strict diet that is high in protein and calories, but low in fat. Meals are eaten in rigid strict intervals.

Some research also has indicated that in women weightlifters a high percentage who used steroids had been raped — a fact that was not true of women weightlifters who were clean and steroid-free (Gruber & Pope, 1999). Among these women, virtually none ever considered “using” prior to the attack. Interviews revealed that the women felt their superior strength would intimidate men or that men would simply find them unattractive.

Hence, in both men and women, the drugs were providing a psychological shield against the horrors of physical and sexual abuse.

Perhaps Dr. John Ziegler, who is accredited with discovering the popular steroid Dianabol, or D-bol for short, summed up the situation best when he allegedly said, on his deathbed, “I wish I had never discovered steroids.”

As for me — well, I’ve chosen to carry my ailing dog up and down the stairs. It doesn’t cost a dime, it’s an excellent form of static contraction exercise, and unless she decides to bite me, it’s a heck of a lot safer than steroids!

References
Courson, S. & Schreiber, L.R. (1991). False Glory: Steelers and Steroids, The Steve Courson Story. Stamford, Connecticut: Longmeadow Press.
Gaines, C. & Bulter, G. (1982). Yours in Perfect Manhood, Charles Atlas. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Gironda, V. and Kennedy, R. (1984). Unleashing The Wild Physique. New York: Sterling Publishing, Inc.
Gruber, A.J. and Pope, H.G. Jr. (1999). Compulsive weightlifting and anabolic drug use among women rape victims. Comprehensive Psychiatry 40 (4) 273-277.

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