Adler, Jerry, Toxic Strength: Steroids and Kids, How Sports Doping Hits Home, Newsweek, 20 December 2004, pp

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1 Adler, Jerry, Toxic Strength: Steroids and Kids, How Sports Doping Hits Home, Newsweek, 20 December 2004, pp OVERVIEW According to Monitoring the Future, the University of Michigan s Institute of Social Research s annual report, the rate of steroid use by high school students rose from about 2% in the early 1990s to 4% by 2002 before dropping off a bit after A Newsweek study of the data concluded that 300,000 students between 8 th and 12 grades used steroids in And they weren t all jocks; as many as one third were girls, and experts say there is a growing problem of steroid use by boys whose heroes aren t baseball sluggers but sinewy, rock-jawed models glowering from the pages of the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. This article contains the stories of teenagers whose physical and psychological diagnosis has come to be known as muscle dysmorphia (sometimes called reverse anorexia ). It can take years to hit bottom with many drugs, but here are stories of students who came to sad or tragic ends in just a year. One such case is that of Chris Wash, who allowed his picture to be on the December 20, 2004 Newsweek cover. In twelve months Chris Wash, a 6-foot-2 guard on the Plano West High School basketball team in Plano, Texas, went from a rangy 180 pounds to a hulking 230, with shoulders so big he could barely pull on his backpack in the morning. And he developed a whole new personality to match that intimidating physique: depressed, aggressive and volatile. After a series of fights in his junior year his coach threw him off the team, but by then building muscles had become an end in itself. He switched from pills to injecting himself with steroids in the buttocks, often with a couple of friends, including a promising high-school baseball player named Taylor Hooton. That went on for several months, until one day Hooton was found dangling from his belt in his bedroom, an apparent suicide. Frightened, Wash gathered up his vials and syringes and threw them down the sewer. But an insidious thing about steroids is that stopping them can lead to depression. A few weeks later Wash drove to a bridge across a Dallas freeway and walked to the middle, looking down at the rushing traffic.

2 Chris didn t jump. Instead he called his mother and is in recovery willing to let his story help others. His dead friend, Taylor wasn t as fortunate. His father remembers how Taylor had told him, Pop, I d never do drugs, and reflects, I sincerely believe he didn t see steroids as a drug. None of these kids do. The seductiveness of steroid use is understandable in a culture with so much stress on appearance. Chris Wash still remembers the high of walking his high school halls with aggressive swagger while boys murmured, Don t mess with that kid, and how his girl friend admired his rock firm biceps. Dr. Kirk Brower also knows the allure of the drug as an addiction specialist at the University of Michigan: They make you pumped, aggressive, hypersexual, and that s going to feel good to a lot of these kids. Teenagers need to see beyond the image and the pleasure of their new bodies to themselves, their coaches, and the opposite sex. Joshua Dupont heard his coaches praising a faster teammate and became jealous. Steroids were easy to get. Together with hard work in the gym, they seemed to pay off. I began seeing results in three days. I could spend the entire day at the gym and just keep pumping the same muscle without fatigue. After a week of taking the stuff I went from 4.7 seconds to 4.6 (in the 40-yard dash). It was incredible. Although they can see new muscles and feel new strength within days, young athletes need to know the long-term effects may be to stunt growth and cause injuries that could end the very career they were intending to enhance. Broken down, head to foot, here are the effects pointed out: hair loss and baldness headaches strokes and blood clots severe acne on face and back nausea high blood pressure and heart disease liver damage bloating urinary and bowel problems aching joints mood swings aggressive behavior increased risk of tendon injuries.

3 Additional problems for men include development of breasts impotence reduced sperm count enlarged prostate. Woman face their own set of problems: reduced breast size enlarged clitoris increase in facial and body hair deepened voice menstrual problems. Of course users commonly deny such side-effects. At any gym in the country you can find people who claim to have been using steroids for years with minimal problems (says Harrison-Pope, a psychiatrist at Harvard University and addiction specialist at McLean Hospital). If you re big and muscular and people admire you for that, why would you seek treatment to become smaller? I could count on both hands the number of patients who have sought treatment from me for addiction to steroids. Pediatric psychologist Dr. Alan Rogol (Univ. of Virginia) explains how anabolic steroids enter a muscle cell and switch on the genes that manufacture muscle proteins. Then, weight lifting stresses the muscles and adds mass. If you took steroids by themselves, you d gain some muscle protein, but not nearly as much as if you do it with exercise. The combination can make a skinny Pittsburgh Pirate into a San Francisco Giant who hits 73 home runs, but we won t mention any names. Little league kids have watched the performance of major league players even while the League and Players Association denied, minimized and stalled action. And by the time they reached high school the pressure to become big and the accessibility of enhancers seemingly provided an easy path to success. The article continues: A (former Little League standout and) high-school star who wanted to play in the majors, Rob Garibaldi had everything but size. So he took creatine and andro in high school, then turned to steroids at USC. The

4 drugs made him depressed and violent. But yearning for the big leagues, he continued to take them. In 2002 he shot himself to death after he d failed to get picked in the major-league draft. (His mother says) We were naïve. If it came from a nutrition store, we thought it must be OK. That was always the goal: gain 20 more pounds. He said this was something baseball players do. Now his parents, Ray and Denise Garibaldi hope Rob s story will steer other teens away from steroids. An increasing amount of steroid use isn t even connected with sports. Analyze the evolution of toy characters like G.I. Joe; look at the metamorphism of male video characters into super-masculinity with outlandish muscles. Harvard clinical psychologist Roberto Olivardia has co-authored, with Pope, The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession. He points out that Much like the anorexic nervoser never feels thin enough, men with muscle dysmorphia never feel big enough. Steroid use is addictive in strange and complex ways. A particular sadness comes as one looks into the youthful faces of those who have died pictured in this article. Dealing with steroids and the many enhancer drugs in professional sports has proven a difficult challenge. Pressures on students to excel are difficult for parents and other adults to understand. And there is the adolescent sense of invincibility and immortality. It is important to ponder the death of young athletes and to hear the stories of those who have come through. When I was hitting someone, I couldn t stop, says Mike Bauch, an 18- yer-old former high-school wrestler who has been on and off andro and steroids since seventh grade. Yet, when a heavy user stops taking steroids, his testosterone level can drop practically to zero for weeks until his testes resume production producing the opposite syndrome, a devastating depression. After Chris Wash called his mother, he entered therapy and is in recovery from his addiction. He lost months of classes and had to transfer out of Plano West to an alternative school that has no basketball team. But he has this to say to other youth: I could have had a scholarship to play ball in college. Basketball was my life. It s who I was And now here I am, still in an alternative school. I think I ve got a chance. I could have ended up like Taylor. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

5 1. Have you ever used strength and growth enhancers or steroids? Do you know anyone who has? 2. How important do you consider this article from Newsweek to be? From this summary do you consider it to be balanced and fair? 3. What most impressed you in this article? What questions or comments do you have on its content? 4. What references to culture and the media did you find here? How important are they in talking about the use of steroids? 5. Where and how do you think this could be discussed? How might the discussion introduced and concluded? 6. Where might faith and religious belief come into this current challenge? IMPLICATIONS 1. It s clear that our fast changing culture, caught up in consumerism, celebrity and appearance is producing new problems and challenges for young people and all of us. 2. Steroid (and enhancer) use among young and older is a critical issue filled with the complexities of paradox and denials. It will take collaboration from medical science and psychology, professional sports and the government, parents, teachers, youth workers, and young people themselves to deal with this growing problem. Dean Borgman c. CYS