Anabolic Steroids: Not Just A Major League Problem

Michael was fifteen years old. He felt very small and weak in comparison to many other boys his age as a result of being picked on and teased by other boys his age. He wanted to change his circumstances, and began working out to build up his muscles. By his next birthday, Michael already weighed a total of 165 pounds and was only 5'9" tall. Still, his desire to be even bigger was still in him, and he went to the local gym. There he discovered anabolic steroids, and illegally bought some. Side effects that Michael hadn't previously thought of began to affect him while his body and muscles became bigger. He was hit with sudden, violent mood swings and had an extremely short temper. Although his family realized he was going into depression, Michael felt unable to reach out to his family for help as a result of unhinged emotions. He used violence and troublemaking as a way to vent his frustrations. During one dispute, he was shot in the head. Michael was eighteen when he died.

Stories like the one above happen more often than one would think. Steroids are a major problem not only for professional athletes, but also teenagers and young adults, who just want better bodies as a result from the pressure of today's society.

Steroids cause a slew of problems for the body. They can cause liver tumors, fluid retention, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and coronary artery disease, just to name a few. They are also known to cause masculinity in a female's appearance, and as in Michael's case, have been known to cause severe depression. Many athletes think that when they take steroids, their muscles are going to get bigger; that they'll be better athletes. While the first is always true, you can not make a person who is not coordinated good at football without practice, even with the use of steroids. Many athletes who take anabolic steroids do not take into account the negative effects of such drugs, and usually only realize them when it's too late. The damage is done to the body, and all the person can do is take the pain and hope they didn't do enough damage to be deadly.

Women tend to have softer features than their male counterparts. Women who take steroids don't think that the same things that happen to men who take them will happen to them. But they are wrong. Women on steroids can get the same side effects as men do, including making her soft features look more masculine. It has been seen in women who've used steroids that a manlike balding pattern occurs, along with deepening of the voice and growth of facial hair. A woman's balding pattern usually consists of thinning just over the top of the scalp, unlike a man's balding pattern, which follows a typical pattern of a receding hair line and thinning of the hair on the crown.

Everyone knows that a man typically has a deeper voice than that of women. In fact, a woman's voice is usually about half an octave higher than her male counterpart's. However, the resonance of a man's voice is much lower than that of a woman's, and if she were to use anabolic steroids, a woman may develop a more manly-sounding voice. Also brought up in my second point, women typically do not have much, if any, facial hair. This is because women lack the male hormone testosterone. But again, if a woman were to use steroids, of which many have testosterone listed in the ingredients, she would probably begin to develop facial hair.

While the above should be reason enough to not want to use steroids, there is one reason far more important than them. Michael experienced the severe depression that steroids cause firsthand, and eventually died as a result of it. But not just men face severe depression on the usage of steroids; women do, as well. Along with depression, users may also develop emotional disorders such anorexia and bulimia, mood swings severe enough to throw the user into suicidal tendencies, and drug dependency. Anorexia is defined as a psychiatric diagnosis that describes an eating disorder with symptoms like excessive weight loss, body image distortion, and an overly obsessive fear of gaining weight.

All these symptoms can be caused by anabolic steroids through psychological views of one's own body. This disease can also be the root of bulimia, which is defined as recurrent binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting. This action, though it seems innocent enough, can result in chronic gastric reflux, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, oral trauma, and other problems.

These diseases are serious, though mainstream society merely views them as minor. Also, anabolic steroids, such as cortisone and prednisone, are known substances to cause anxiety, cases ranging from mild to severe. Anxiety is a psychological state of mind characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. Anxiety is accompanied by such symptoms as feelings of dread, tense, or jumpy, trouble comprehending things and concentrating, anticipating the worst, irritability and restlessness, watching and waiting for danger, nightmares in the form of dreams, deja vu, and feeling as if you're trapped.

I also brought up the fact that anabolic steroids cause mood swings, which are defined as sudden violent changes in behavior. They are a major side effect of anabolic steroids. Mood swings have been seen in professional athletes such as the Angels' outfielder Gary Matthews Jr., Cleveland Browns' football player Lyle Alzado, and body builder Gregg Valentino. Other, and unfortunate, athletes have died either by use of anabolic steroids or their effects are Ken Caminiti, a professional baseball player who was only 41 when he died and professional wrestler Eddie Guerrero, who died at the young age of 38. Recently, anabolic steroids have come under fire by news stations such as CNN and FOX News because of the late Chris Benoit, who died in June of 2007 and was suspected of having been under "'roid rage", an intense feeling brought on by use of steroids, when he killed his wife Nancy and seven year old son Daniel.

Anabolic steroids don't just affect one person; they affect the user's entire family. They have serious repercussion's on our society. Both men and women are being destroyed, both in a physical and a mental aspect by these drugs, which are so often overlooked or even ignored by a coach or others. What would drive someone to use steroids? Maybe they've been picked on throughout school because they're not the best athlete, and just want to be popular.

Or maybe they want to root the quarterback off the football team and take his spot. The bottom line is that these, and other reasons young users of steroids give, are just excuses they use to cover up the fact that they are destroying themselves from the inside out. It's not just a small problem on the local football team; it's a nationwide problem that needs to be dealt with. While smart people will learn from mistakes made in the past, a truly smart person will learn from people like Michael. The question is, what kind of person will you be?