Steroids / Gear

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

This is exactly why I tend to bemoan the legal status of various gear. Seems to come down to... what, sports?

precisely sports, yes.

you can watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSbNPZ4_jvk

or see my section from the birth control writeup:

"Taking estrogen externally can have birth control effects in women; taking testosterone externally can have birth control effects in men. The female birth control pill is usually a combined estrogen and progestin pill.

The distinction between "roids" and "hormones" is arbitrary. The difference is that male hormones directly help build muscle and female hormones almost always don't. "Anabolic" is just a functional category, like "painkiller," that describes a particular effect the drug has -- builds muscle, or kills pain.

It is entirely possible to produce testosterone in pill form, by the way. It's just not the healthiest way. If congress didn't have an ethical axe to grind, it would be similarly available as the combined oral contraceptive pill.

The DEA's drug scheduling list is bonkers. The higher the schedule, the more illegal it is, based on the presumption that higher scheduling = more dangerous, however for anyone who has used recreational drugs this list is pants-on-head stupid: marijuana is still schedule I in some states, cocaine is schedule II, and xanax is schedule IV.

So, testosterone (without prescription) is as illegal as codeine. You should expect law enforcement to prioritize it about as much. Most major busts (incident tracker) that find schedule III arrests occur because law enforcement is pursuing higher-scheduled drugs and schedule IIIs happen to be found alongside it. (However, there are exceptions for kingpins.)

The reason effective hormonal male birth control is illegal is because injecting external male sex hormones tends to be extremely effective for building muscle, which is useful in sports. Criminalizing a drug solely for sport ethics might seem absurd, but the interaction of sports and steroid laws has a long history. Further, when you look at what drugs are made illegal, and why, patterns emerge. Not all hormones or drugs that are harmful to the user are equally harmful, and disparities in enforcement lead to indications of why those drugs might be criminalized when the side effects are equal or, in some cases, more detrimental in some hormone-altering drugs that are far less restricted. Clomifene is used to treat ovulation issues in women but can also be used to make testosterone levels quite high in men, but not exceeding supraphysiological levels like direct testosterone supplementation could. Clomifene's side effects when used for this purpose can be just as detrimental as testosterone supplementation. However, because Clomifene doesn't confer an advantage in sports relying on muscularity to the degree exogenous testosterone does, far less attention is paid to it and the hormone is not scheduled.

Additionally, the DEA is purported to have been originally opposed to the criminalization of steroids during a floor hearing. From an article on the Steroid Control Act: "In 1988, the U.S. congress began a two-year hearing process to determine if the original Controlled Substances Act needed to be reinforced. The use of anabolic steroids, although existing for decades, had begun to make headline news as their use in in professional sports had become highly apparent. During the two year hearing, congress called upon the American Medical Association (AMA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to testify. Congress was hopeful that the agencies would testify in support of the proposed legislation. However, the results of the testimony were presented in a very unpleasing manner to congress. All five agencies testified in opposition to the legislation stating there was no evidence that even abuse of anabolic steroids could or would lead to physical or psychological dependency, a requirement for legislation to be passed under the Controlled Substances Act."

Testosterone has a dose-linear effect with muscle building. For example, a graph from a study in the "science of steroids" article shows muscle gained at various doses: 125mg/week (a typical dose for a Testosterone Replacement Therapy prescription) gained about 3.5kg, 300mg gained about 5kg and 600mg (well above what your body is capable of producing) gained 8kg. Some bodybuilders will take doses up to 1-2g/week, and, well, you can imagine what happens. Note that if you aren't already a person who takes fitness seriously, this effect would be negligible; they are a multiplier effect, so people who train like garbage don't get good results anyway. Anabolics tend to be taken by people who are either (a) looking for a shortcut and have no idea what they're doing, or (b) extremely disciplined and know exactly what they're doing, with little in between.

This is why they tend to be illegal. Roid rage is a myth. Anyone who believes they are illegal for reasons other than some kind of sports ethics is delusional; amphetamine (aka Adderall) is widely used by college students and adults in intellect-heavy occupations, and its effects on the body long-term are much worse, and it is easy to overdose on, but it faces maybe a tenth of the stigma. I say this as a pro-Adderall person who (a) has been diagnosed with ADHD and (b) received an adderall prescription and noticed a positive qualify of life change from it."

[Arch0wl]

Also, it goes without saying, but people should probably watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWHH9je2zG4

You cannot take hormones literately without having some basic idea of how the endocrine system works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4e70nG3T8U

This is from Khan; it's about testosterone but this is the primary anabolic hormone, so it's worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h1zwzPYn9k

This is good too; there's 3 parts. The series will probably go over most people's heads but as long as you retain even a fraction of the information you'll walk away benefiting.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

This is exactly why I tend to bemoan the legal status of various gear. Seems to come down to... what, sports?

Like, estrogen is a steroid hormone... it's just not anabolic (afaik).

The irony though (to add to Arch0wl's good points), is that despite this being the majority of the justification for their ban, their use is still rampant and in many sports it's difficult to even be competitive without drugs.

One reality is that drug tests are extremely bad at detecting drugs. Piss tests in particular are notoriously easy to pass. Only blood tests are really effective and even then there are lots of new drugs you can run straight through a blood test. Urine tests can't even pick up most of the hormones you can buy easily in many places and you can run them year round straight through a piss test.

So basically drug usage is widespread in sports and, yes, in the olympics. This should be evident to anyone who actually follows drug busts in sports since people getting busted for steroid use is relatively common, even among people that preach incessantly about how steroids are cheating. And this happens despite how shitty the tests are and how lax most sporting regulations are towards drugs in reality.

In reality, most regulatory bodies don't want to enforce drug testing anyway because it's bad for the sport. Performance would go down if we lost the drugs, and performance gets views. People want to see superhumans. Drug usage is so bad in many sports that most people are using. Take football for example. I workout at a big football gym for one of the universities. I've overheard plenty of gear talks and know a lot of people on the team there. Most of the guys even at the college level are using. A couple of them have already been busted for winstrol usage because they're idiots (one of the easiest compounds to detect in urine). All of the guys that need any size are already running Test and Dbol.

It's rampant in a lot of sports, though I won't list them because everyone gets their panties in a fucking knot when their sport shows up on the list because the natties heroes swoop in to try and justify how their hero doesn't take steroids.

But most of them do.


Another reality is that drugs are, in many sports at elite peak performance, more often than not safer to take than trying to perform at that level naturally.

Having a lean ripped physique while maintaining substantial muscle mass while natural is a pipe dream. Most studies show it's extremely difficult for most naturals to maintain body fat below 8% for any sustained period of time without hormonal crash (there are exceptions, but usually based on genetics or people using strange diets. Lean gains seems to be a candidate). Most naturals can't maintain lower than 10-12% year round, but leaner comes with serious health risks. Many elite sports also require training frequency that is too high for naturals to sustain because recovery cannot be achieved, or injury risks becomes increasingly high.

Steroids fix both of these problems by increasing recovery, decreasing risk of injury, allowing athletes to train harder and more seriously over sustained periods of time without injury, and they also allow athletes to maintain more muscle mass with a lower body fat percentage without crashing their hormones and causing short or long term health risks.

So why not use? It seems logical at elite levels of sporting.

(cuz datz cheatin' rite)


At the end of the day, I don't care about use. The olympics should have no drug restrictions and leagues that want to enforce drug rules should have their own federations.

Because the only thing that actually pisses me off is fake natties and feds that pretend to want natties when they don't.

Crossfit is notoriously bad right now. I mean, everyone knows you have to juice to go anywhere in Powerlifting, and bodybuilding is basically a pharmaceutical showcase, but Crossfit and people that compete in it like to pretend that they're natural but everyone in that sport is juiced out of their mind lmao.


The olympics will never change its stance due to PR reasons, but it's rapidly becoming a joke. Their new stance on allowing trans men to compete against women is going to be a shit show.

[Dynam0]

Originally Posted by Reach

The olympics will never change its stance due to PR reasons, but it's rapidly becoming a joke. Their new stance on allowing trans men to compete against women is going to be a shit show.

When they start getting public backlash because all of the trans competitors are destroying the competition they'll change their stance. People are generally good at calling something unfair when they see it, the steroid stuff is so optimized now that the playing field is pretty much level there.

[Reach]

Well yeah, steroids aren't really a problem of fairness because all the top athletes are using them, so it's a completely level field. If anything, steroids are fairer than natural competition because very skilled people with genetic limitations can compensate by adding more drugs.

But trans competition will cause problems, it is inevitable. There have already been instances of women competing with internal testes that wiped the floor with the competition. The problem with transitioning from male to female is that testosterone has long lasting, permanent effects on bone structure and even how much muscle you can maintain. You can't change that simply by transitioning.

[xomegaxweapon]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

xomegaxweapon: See rule 1 of this subforum.

http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...d.php?t=137524

your rules, ok, noted.

[Arch0wl]

People don't realize just how easy drug tests are to beat. Even blood tests.

Testosterone levels only fail when they're not within natural levels. So all you need to do is get an ester that lasts a few days, and let your levels drop a bit, and then you're at "natural" levels. You can go from 4x natural test levels to passing levels in the span of a day if you want. Any test measuring testosterone levels known at least a day in advance will always fail at its intended purpose. Always. It's inherent to the nature of these measurements.

This is even more true with HGH and peptides. It's virtually impossible to detect.

The only tests that work are the ones that Norway does, which are insane -- think "knocking at your door at 2AM, randomly, demanding a urine sample" insane. Most countries do not have the resources or labor to do this; the olympics definitely doesn't. So unless you go to this level, and pretty much no one will, drug tests will always be easily beatable.

[Reach]

Even then, HGH and peptides can be ran year round with no consequence even if you randomly test people at 2 am, they simply can't be detected.

And that still means increased fat free mass index, increased recovery, increased injury reduction.

It's just too easy.

Not to mention I hear that if you need AAS while under strict testing regimes, top coaches usually have connections to people that can get access to new drugs that won't show up on the test regardless.

[Reincarnate]

As per Arch's link earlier, if something like testosterone has a dose-linear multiplier effect with respect to muscle building, how does it affect connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments?

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

As per Arch's link earlier, if something like testosterone has a dose-linear multiplier effect with respect to muscle building, how does it affect connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments?

not as fast -- usually people will add nandrolone and GH/IGF to combat this

also, I don't think test has a dose-linear multiplier effect. it has a somewhat dose-linear multiplier effect and then a hard ceiling, I suspect at around 1200mg/wk, possibly less or more depending on body weight and how much IGF the body has to begin with, since androgenic activity can only make use of the IGF it has on hand.

you can see this effect in action when guys on gear forums will take 1g/week and not experience any more growth than they would at 500mg/week. they probably capped out at around 750mg/week due to their bodyweight and their body's lack of ability to utilize the increase androgenic activity.

past a certain point the body will be unable to use androgen receptor activity to initiate growth, or this growth will be limited. this is why bodybuilders from Arnold's era maxed out at a certain size until Ronnie's era gave people GH, insulin and IGF -- it allowed growth beyond just the growth that happens from androgenic activity.

this video gives an explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-arBEvoYiYU

[Reach]

Yeah, there are natural limits to growth but there are also enhanced limitations to growth inherent to genetic factors.

I suspect the next stage in bodybuilding evolution would be myostatin inhibition.

It doesn't really work in humans yet but people suspect guys like Big Ramy naturally have a genetic disorder related to this, since we do know it is possible in humans since people have been born with deficiencies.

[.Gazelle.]

ayy, im actually currently doing a research paper on myostatin inhibition and what it could mean for kids with muscular dystrophy