Men's Health: 6 years, 12 cycles, 30 pounds of muscle

[fleXodus]

Original article here


6 YEARS, 12 CYCLES, 30 POUNDS OF MUSCLE
One man's story.

By Anonymous

At the end of 1996, I had been training hard for 12 years, and the results were obvious. At 5-foot-8, I had built myself up from 95 pounds to a high of 230, though 210 was about the most I could carry without looking chubby. I had 17-inch arms and was one of the strongest guys at my gym, squatting more than 500 pounds and pressing 140-pound dumbbells overhead. I had done very well in several drug-tested bodybuilding shows and had been featured in magazines.

But I was still nowhere near the physique I had dreamed of since high school. I wanted more size and better shape, and achieving this goal naturally seemed impossible.

I began my first steroid cycle 6 years ago, when I was 27 years old. My wife was upset, but I had researched the subject, and convinced her I wasn't risking my health. Within a few weeks I gained nearly 20 pounds, and every single lift went up 20 to 30 percent. My muscles had a fuller look, as if inflated with air or pumped full of water.

I felt I could work out for hours if I wanted.

My sex drive also went through the roof, and my wife complained about my increasing demands. Other, more negative side effects included water retention in my face and disgusting, boil-like acne pustules across my back and shoulders. But the worst impact was on my reputation at the gym. I'd been a vocal opponent of steroid use for the 4 years I'd trained there, and now I was Mr. Hypocrite.

I lost a few good friends.

Now, 6 years and about 12 cycles later, I weigh a solid 240 pounds, although I diet down to 210 when I enter bodybuilding competitions. My arms are up to 19 inches, and, although injuries have kept my strength from improving dramatically, I'm finally close to the look I always wanted.
That muscle came at a price. I've spent close to $30,000 on steroids and now stay on them at least two-thirds of the year. I have masses of scar tissue in my glutes from hundreds of injections. People I meet are intimidated, and some automatically assume I'm a jerk, which I'm not. But that's all trivial compared with this: A few months ago, after a cycle in which I had used a lot of oral steroids to prepare for a contest, a blood test showed liver damage comparable to that of a hepatitis patient.

My liver has almost fully recovered, but now my wife wants me to quit. She says that at some stage I have to give up the idea of getting bigger and focus on my health, and I don't disagree. It's also getting harder to conceal my steroid use from the older of our two children.

Here's my advice to anyone considering steroids: Unless you're at or very near your maximum genetic potential, don't waste your time. Using steroids too soon will keep you from learning how to make gains without them. If you're under 23, you have no business juicing. Besides the fact you have enough natural testosterone, you could stunt your growth if you haven't reached your full adult height. Finally, most guys who set out to do "just one cycle" end up using steroids for years.

If you think you'll be the exception, you've just joined a very big club. Once you've started, it's tough to go back.

It's a personal choice, but one you have to think through as carefully as any other decision you make in life. Be sure you aren't going to let the desire to be huge take precedence over career and family, because big muscles don't pay the bills, and they'll never love you as much as you love them.

[lucas]

Looks like my story, but the difference is that I have no regrets and lovethem to death... never looked as good as when I was a year non-stop.

[brent]

Originally Posted by fleXodus

...
If you think you'll be the exception, you've just joined a very big club.
...

Everyone claims how common steroid use is, yet I've seen VERY little evidence of it in ANY gym I've ever belonged to. I'm not saying I'd use them, I'd just like to have the choice to decide for myself.

[gymtoffee]

Hello
I am 6' tall and have gone from a slim 140lbs to the current muscled 200lbs during 12 years of bodybuilding and gymnastics.
At the moment I feel happy about my body and many people think I did steroids (never took any).
Eating and training surely works, but slowly. Steroids are probably a good shortcut.
At the moment I feel very proud to say "never took that" but would not mind trying as I think as everything can be done safely if you don't exceed the doses recommended by doctors.
All the bad side effects I've seen are connected with abuse.
My BF is a great personal trainer and suggested me some cycle to try, I htink it is not too heavy and should be risk free.
Maybe I won't get huge with a overdose, but I don't want to! Should I get to 210 or 220 lbs I would be happy like a bunny and would not do it again (am just curious now and I don't get addicted to anything, I don't smoke, don't drink, no drugs etc...)
What do you think?
cheers
S

[glammaman2000]

You CAN put on muscle without'roids!&if you do;everyone will accuse you of using them.Forget the physical hazards.The psychological risks can show up WAY faster.Irritability(I've seen it cost people jobs&boyfriends)or depression(my particular complication&I'm very cheerful by nature)Some people have no problems for a very long time.Coose carefully!

[UKBeefy]

I think one of the main drivers that pushes people towards joining the roid bandwagon is the slow but steady realisation that anyone u credit with a decent bodybuilder physique is on stuff. I don't mean people going for a slightly bigger version of a defined/swimmers build but really that unmistakable "built" form that you can see under clothes...the thickness and shape especially of the upper body (the shoulders/traps/back/chest width depth). Everyone I know who has that look and is probably 30-40lbs heavier than their normal friends (assuming their friends are not 140lb skinny types) is on stuff. It was this slow dawning for me that made me realise that in order to be "noticeably" the right sort of shape would require juice.

Yes I would agree that it is ludicrous for beginners to launch straight into juice (a friend of a friend has just done this against my advice) but I would also say that the idea that people should go right to their genetic maximum first naturally is not being realistic. Most people I know who have benefited from juice have spent a fair few years training and more importantly making changes to their diet. But I think none of them actually has gone so hell for leather at it that they are entirely maxing out their natural potential. But using juice allows people to get bigger and make gains that frankly they would never make naturally...perhaps not because they could never theoretically make them but more realistically cannot given the normal pressures of everyday life.

I think the problem comes with people never being satisfied - they see the images on the net and perhaps the very occasional person in real life who is huge and in shape and think "that is what I want" and massively increase dosages and cycle lengths to get to a seriously unusual size.

I know plenty of people doing stuff and as far as I can tell nobody is suffering massively bad side effects or personality problems at the moderate level of taking stuff and particularly some older guys look great on it.

[chris_abs]

i agree with you entirely UKbeefy.

I've got to the point where i thought i was ready to up training a notch and to get noticeably bigger ;-)

I'll see how it goes!!

[brent]

Originally Posted by UKBeefy

...
I think the problem comes with people never being satisfied - they see the images on the net and perhaps the very occasional person in real life who is huge and in shape and think "that is what I want" and massively increase dosages and cycle lengths to get to a seriously unusual size.
...

From what I've heard, steroids are very hard n your liver, and that's what causes long-term problems. if you keep your cycle length & dosages at prescribed levels, have your liver-levels checked every few months, I think you'll avoid a lot of problems.

Remember: I have no medical training, and no experience with steroids, so take my advice with a grain of salt..

[gymtoffee]

Originally Posted by chris_abs

i agree with you entirely UKbeefy.

I've got to the point where i thought i was ready to up training a notch and to get noticeably bigger ;-)

I'll see how it goes!!

Yes I agree totally with UKBeefy. I thought about steroids because I got a very authoritative advice and the confirmation of a doctor, it scares me when I think about teenagers buying stuff maybe from the net and injecting stuff without knowing what they are doing! Also at my age (39) it is probably much safer than doing it at 20 or less for many reasons, and my biggest concern is to get too big (or big in a way which could be not necessarily nice) as I always consider myself in a very good shape. So it is just curiosity and will to put on that "extra bit"...then I will have many other things in my mind apart from steroids!!
S

[brent]

Originally Posted by gymtoffee

...
my biggest concern is to get too big (or big in a way which could be not necessarily nice)
...

Are you insane??? How can anyone be too big, or too muscular?!?!?

[GymDudeVA]

They are not that hard on your liver, actually. Injectables have almost no effect on your liver. Yes, you read that correctly. It's only the orals, and even then, you gotta pop them like candy to get damage...which this guy admits (i.e., it took an unusually high amouint of orals, after SIX YEARS of not-as-high use). Cf. tynelol, alcohol....

Let's play spot-the-exaggerations-in-the-anti-roids-story, shall we?

1. "disgusting, boil-like acne pustules ", well maybe, but I have hundreds of buddies who uice, and the most I have ever seen is some mild acne, if that. This must be one unlucky dude.

2. He's 5-8, and 230 (but 210 with no chubbiness LOL) PRE-steroids. Within a few weeks, he gains 20 pounds. that makes....250. Then after 6 years and 12 cycles, and all that nasty water weight, he's up to...240!! Something does not compute. Plus, if he was a pretty lean 210 at 5-8, he is already much more muscular than 95% of juicers out there.

3. So everyone at the gym knows he is juicing. HOW?? Could it be that freaky 10-pound weight gain over 6 years???? And they all give enough of of a shit to care what he thinks about juicing, then get all offended when he does? These are bizarre "friends".

4. He built up from 95 to 230???? He used to weigh 95 pounds!?!??

5. MY FAVORITE: He spent 30k on juice. That is $2500 a cycle!!!! I spend MAYBE $600 on a 4-month cycle, if I splurge. Must be the zillion anadrols and dbols he takes that affect his liver.

[dallasmsl]

Excellent. Continue to spread the word.

[harleyxr]

Wow!!! Great thread. I'm still catching up on what you guys were doing before I was around. Great PROS and CONS.

YES teens and young guys have no buisness juicing before they have reached their genetic potential. YES you can damage yourself from doing too much of almost anything, especially oral steroids. YES you can become psychologically addicted to substances but that's about the most valid problem (in my humble opinion).

I've done quite a few cycles of quite a few substances and: I've NEVER had "roid rage". I'm agreeable and easygoing always. "Roid rage" is an easy excuse for guys that often aren't too easy to get along with to start. No increased acne at all. I have blood tests every 4 months. No increased liver enzymes at all. I can get a high red blood cell count and a little higher blood pressure so I watch that. My doctor knows the score and told me when to back off. I know that point and those 'feelings' without tests now. The water retention can make me look a little smooth but mostly just makes the veins stand out like a road map (that's hard to take- smile). I don't overspend at all, I just use a reasonable portion of my discretionary income.

Again- just my two cents, but that's how it is for me.

[nnnrg]

Originally Posted by harleyxr

[...]
I've done quite a few cycles of quite a few substances and: I've NEVER had "roid rage". I'm agreeable and easygoing always. "Roid rage" is an easy excuse for guys that often aren't too easy to get along with to start.
[...]

Many years ago I was doing a zero-carb diet and found that I was SO much more irritable and snappish that I stopped. As soon as I started eating a small amount of carbohydrate this particular symptom vanished.
I noticed at the gym, the bodybuilders who were most hostile and aggressive (not expecially raging, just more aggressive) were the ones who were on cutting cycles, which in the 1980s meant almost zero carb for a month or so.

I saw an interesting commentary years ago (but more recently) about PMS that implicated progesterone, estrogen, and estrodiol in the wild mood swings. The balance of these hormones is apparently more important than the actual levels, for women. I wondered at the time whether so-called 'roid rage' was connected to out-of-balance levels of estrogen and progesterone for men. It seems pretty likely, given that about half of the testosterone and testosterone-analogues have potential for causing gynecomastia, that they are aromatizing or otherwise converting to other hormones, and that matches the 'elevated aggression levels' found in athletes using those drugs by some studies, even removing the inherent bias in those studies.
(They don't identify baseline aggression levels in the subjects first? How is that valid? These are athletes trained to be aggressive from gradeschool on, people!)

My suspicion is that, in cases where there is a personality change, that it can be due to any number of things, but I'd check diet as well as whether the roid user is taking any protective measures, and not forget that other life circumstances can cause mood swings.

A friend who was taking supplemental testosterone