You’re looking at a muscle fitness magazine and as you flip through each page you see more and more of these massive guys and the only thing you can think about is being just like them. It isn’t a mystery to anyone how their muscles became so enlarged, and the only thing stopping you from trying to reach their extreme is the fact that the stimulants they used were steroids. Fear of steroids does not result because of the word itself that can haunt one’s mind or that the knowledge of the use of steroids can have negative impacts on your body.
It is the fact that the use of these drugs are illegal and just because of this restriction, it makes it that much harder to trust these types of drugs. Every body builder wishes that steroids were legal in the sense of recreational use. For a drug that has so many positives uses it’s hard to believe that it is labeled as a negative and unhealthy supplement due to the fact that once someone says it is bad everyone jumps on the band wagon on how it is possibly terrible for your body.
But for someone to really take sides on either yes or no to steroids you have to know what they actually are. Steroids are synthetic substances that are very similar to the male sex hormone testosterone. They help increase the amount of testosterone and/or hormone level that the body produces so that the muscle is able to increase in size and gain new levels of strength (Lukas, 7). The fact of it all is that this supplement that everyone knows as steroids or also known as; roids, juice, fat chick, balls, and gears, is beneficial for any male. People just see the negative side effects and assume that this drug might be so harmful that it has been labeled as the ‘cursed drug that gives you the Hercules body mixed with Godzilla’s rage’. But in actuality, steroids are not this devastating drug that people have labeled it as; they are a supplement that helps push every male to godly limits where all bounds are broken and the sky is the limit when it comes to working out and improving their bodies. Not only do steroids help people enhance their natural limits, but they can also act as an alternative pain reliever for joints and muscle spasms. Making steroids legal will not only allow users to continue transforming their bodies into their ideal shape but in addition, legalizing steroids will also make them safer to buy by avoiding a ‘middle man’ who could potentially tamper with the product, and would also allow the government to make a profit by taxing a product that is in extremely high demand.
Despite all the negative views on these supplements it actually has numerous benefits. The benefits that steroids offer to competitors in the bodybuilding world are plentiful. Bodybuilders use anabolic steroids to build muscle mass, reduce fatigue and enhance performance, allowing many to perform tirelessly at the most physically demanding time of their training. Not only can these drugs help a person become more aggressive at the gym, but also run faster and increase their endurance level to a higher capacity. When coupled together in a cycle of doses, steroids make it possible to achieve amazing results that otherwise would have not been possible.
“Steroids thus seem to speed up the natural process of building muscles that happens with vigorous exercise. They are believed to produce this effect by blocking the breakdown of muscle tissue, which occurs in straining exercise. Instead the chemical balance of the muscles is altered and muscle tissue growth increases. In addition steroids also improve the use of the proteins in foods using their amino acids as building blocks for new muscle tissue” (Silverstein, 35).
There are two main steroids out in the market help improve someone’s body image. First they can help slim down a person so that they have no fat and become what people consider “ripped”. In addition, they can also help increase the weight and mass of a user by substantial gains. With the two different ways of receiving steroids, either by pills or injections, one’s options are plentiful.
As people begin to look into the benefits of steroids they wish to be able to access these gains but there is one problem that stops them from getting the results that they wish for. This one little detail is the fact that steroids are illegal and that to obtain them you have to get them in illegal ways or “under the counter”. Under the counter refers to getting a product, in this case steroids, through the black market without a prescription or in other words illegally. In most cases if you really wanted a steroid, buying from under the counter is not a problem. However, in actuality, there are a lot of black holes that can leave many mysteries on what you are really getting. Meaning that in some cases you may have to buy steroids from a dealer that you don’t know, and what you are receiving may not be the real thing. It is possible that what you are paying for can be something even more dangerous or completely harmless. In some cases you dealers could sell you what is known as a sugar pill and cause the placebo effect, which results in your mind believing that you’re getting gains but in reality you have just tricked your body in what to believe. If the government would make steroids legal, they would be able to regulate and control what a person is buying and guarantee that the product someone receives is in fact a real steroid and not just a regular sugar pill or serum or something more harmful. This would make the buyer feel more confident in their purchase by knowing that it is safe to use and that they are doing it legally. Not only will this make the consumer feel more secure on what they are buying and ingesting, but it would also make it possible for the government to tax steroids, so everybody wins.
The most popular perspective on steroids is what has been said again and again for years; that the use of them increases muscle size and mass beyond belief but that they are harmful and bad for one’s body and can have negative effects in the long run. However, what people do not know is that steroids can be extremely beneficial to health patients who are in dire need of medical help. The benefits of steroids are not limited to athletes and bodybuilders but also to medical patients. Some medical treatments that use steroids as a major stimulate throughout the recovery process are: Extensive treatment of various forms of cancer and other muscle deteriorating diseases, treatment of Bell’s palsy and facial paralysis attacks, treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, treatment of hormonal disorders, asthma and kidney problems(Lukas,47). Other cases where steroids are used in medical treatment is for testicular cancer patients that often require the removal of the testes in men. After surgery, these men are prescribed oral anabolic steroids to replace the testosterone that their bodies are no longer able to naturally produce. This maintains their secondary sexual characteristics. In other cases anabolic steroids in high doses are given to transsexual women who wish to be permanently masculinized. Even though steroids are used to help benefit people in the medical sense, this helps shows how they are not all bad and that they are beneficial and can help solve many problems. In addition, the medical uses show that the many positives outweigh the negatives of what people believe might happen when taking steroids.
Steroid is a word that we all know is bad with no good coming from it. A drug that has killed many men and destroyed many homes, lives and bodies. A cheap way to build a quick body that a true body builder took five years to get and an abuser can form in 1-2 years with the help of steroids. People inject like it doesn’t matter what their putting in their body and they don’t care what the side effects are. It doesn’t matter how quick you want to hit the high level on bench or what you think your gains will be but in the long run you will end up killing every single organ in your body and in the end have your body just shut down on you. People think that the side effects will not affect them. That they take too much care of themselves and carefully watch how much dosage they take. But it doesn’t matter. In the end, the side effects of these potentially deadly drugs will be devastating. Some of the most common side effects that may occur is the destruction of your muscles, this is due to the fact that you are gaining so much mass and strength that you biceps and tendon can’t keep up and thus basically explode after all the buildup of mass. Another negative effect of steroids includes impairment of the immune system. Unfortunately most users and even doctors are not able to detect this happening in the user’s body until after the cycle is over. For all people involved in body building or any sport for that matter, it’s critical to your success to protect your immune system but steroids help shut down your system. The effects of steroids will in the end help cause more pain than anything and are not worth the effort and money to take.
This all may be true about steroids. That there are side effects devastating to the body but like everything if you use and abuse of course there will be terrible side effects. Every product you can possible get, can end up doing harmful things to you, from aspirin to cell phones. Just look at the typical cell phones, it has been proven that if you over use your cell phone and abuse it, it can cause brain tumors and health issues. If you understand how to take the right amount of dosage of steroids and properly alternate cycles, then it is very rare to obtain theses side effects. Like everything, when you don’t use and abuse you will be fine. Everything in life has its limits and the people who abuse steroids are the ones who set the stereotypical image of steroid users and give it a bad reputation.
Steroids in some opinions should stay illegal and in the sports sense they should, but when it comes in term of the recreational use the government should legalize steroids so that it would be possible to purchase them. In doing this, it would make it safer and better for the user to obtain steroids without the need of second guessing them self if what they are buying is really a true steroid. Along with all the benefits that come from steroids such as users who wish to reach past their natural limits, and the fact that doctors use steroids for medical reasons, shows that it is safe and useful and cannot cause extremely bad effects. It isn’t about how you over use steroids, it’s how you use them to benefit you and hopefully one day the government will legalize this supplement so that it is possible for any person to use them.