Way beyond the obvious: The psychological reasons why men and women take steroids
Dr. Howard Rosenthal
Feature Article
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.”
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 worse yet 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? Maybe they are responsible for our new improved super athletes. Here again, Gironda tells us the answer is an unequivocal no, pointing out 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. 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 they wouldn’t take Andro because it was way too weak. Nevertheless, they said it was rumored Andro would foil tests for other serious steroids. Hmm, I wonder why that would be so important to them?
For those of you who believe 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 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 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 t used at the time to fatten up bulls. The drug worked well on Pearl too.
When the first Mr. Olympia 1965 and 1966, Larry Scott (who looked like the All-American boy you would kill for your daughter would bring home on a date), was asked whether he took steroids he replied, “Sure, doesn’t everyone?”
Football Player Steve Courson blew the whistle on his profession when he wrote False Glory: Steelers and Steroids. In this 1991 book he calls the Pittsburgh Steelers “the steroid team of the 70s”, and estimated that 65 to 95% of the top lineman of the era took steroids and related substances.
Football legend Lyle Alzado, who passed away at age 43 in 1992 with a brain tumor, admitted before his death he was ingesting $30,000 a year in performance drugs and dangerous growth hormone. He recalled one period in which he dropped $4000 for human growth hormone alone during a sixteen- week period. 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 as a much more recent example. At his peak as a bodybuilder, Arnold was six feet two inches tall and weighed 235 pounds. He was seemingly unstoppable. Experts at the time suggested Arnold had reached the limits of human physical development. Today opponents competing for the same titles 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 yesteryears, which was dangerous enough – are stacking (i.e., combining) all kinds of steroids and growth hormones that make the drugs taken thirty or forty years ago look like a child’s dosage. Some bodybuilders are spending $5000 a month on muscle building drugs and taking over 100 times what a physician would prescribe for a medical condition!
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, 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 1 out of every 4 had memories of childhood physical or sexual abuse. When interviewing weightlifters that did not use steroids, none had such memories.
Steroids: It’s not just a guy thing
Volume 69, number 1, 2000 of the journal of “Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics” 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. 75 women athletes were recruited via advertisement. An alarming 33% reported current or past use! Sixty-five out of 75 women reported extreme dissatisfaction with their bodies or what behavioral scientists call muscle dysmorphia. In this condition athletes and bodybuilders 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 roughly the opposite of anorexia.
Just 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.
Some research has also indicated in women weightlifters a high percentage that used steroids had been raped. A fact not true of women weightlifters clean and steroid free. Of those women using steroids, virtually none ever considered “using” prior to the attack. Interviews revealed the women felt their superior strength would intimidate men or 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 the situation up best. 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!
Dr. Howard Rosenthal is Professor and Program Coordinator of Human Services at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley. He is the author a number of books including the Encyclopedia of Counseling, the Human Services Dictionary, and Help Yourself to Positive Mental Health. His website is www.counselingshop.com.
