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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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0 5 - 0 4 - 2 0 0 5 Large Community of 'Juicers' Thrives on the Internet
J. SCOTT ORR As fans ponder whether steroids supersized sluggers like Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, a broader scandal persists in a murky, often lawless world where thousands of people are introduced daily to the muscle-swelling properties of performance-enhancing drugs. In this online underground -- where real steroid experts trade doping strategies as casually as homemakers might swap tea cake recipes -- forum members are hardly concerned with beefing up slugging percentages. In this neck of the Internet, hard-core juicers have one focus: getting big as quickly as possible. They talk about how to buy and use steroids, steroid precursors, designer steroids, syringes, drugs to ward off side effects, masking agents and bottles of mystery pills that are labeled as steroids but contain who-knows-what. One popular thread on the Web site anasci.org reads: "Beginners steroids Frequently Asked Questions." "It's very dangerous for kids," said Christian Peterson, a physician and medical consultant to the Seattle Mariners and several Washington state high school teams. "They go on there and they trust these people, whoever they are, who claim to know everything about steroids." While some who post on the Web forums and message boards try to discourage young visitors from using steroids, they nonetheless can provide information on how beginners -- sometimes as young as middle-school students -- can get and consume their first doses of "gear." One forum at anasci.org even details what combinations of steroids yield the best results for beginners, what parts of the body make the best injection sites and how to avoid being caught.
"Anybody can write anything for the Web, which is a scary thing," said Tracy Olrich, a professor of physical education at Central Michigan University and author of the book "Life on Steroids," which chronicles bodybuilders' use of the drugs. "I don't think there is any question that it would increase the likelihood of teenagers attempting to use steroids. "These kinds of sites legitimize it because these kids see it in written form and they trust these guys." At anasci.org, a poster who identified himself as an NCAA Division 1 athlete advised a young steroid seeker to confine his use cycles to the off-season when testing is unlikely. "They have been cracking down more this year. I don't risk it, but if you're game, have at it," he wrote. Another poster dismissed the well-documented health risks of steroids: "It's the same as taking an aspirin ... take two and you will heal, drink the whole box and you will die. Same thing with steroids." While specific information on buying steroids is supposed to be banned under the forum's own rules, many posts contain links to Web sites where anyone with a credit card can buy all manner of performance enhancers. On some sites, separate subscription areas guide users to online steroid stores. Other sites, such as legalsteroids.com, sell products claiming to be steroids directly from menus at the home page. "We're always concerned about the access young athletes have to some of these substances," said Travis Tygart, general counsel to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which oversees drug testing of Olympic athletes. Ultimately, Tygart said, forums and commercial sites gives young athletes access to substances that is "almost as simple as typing something into the Internet." Outside the sports world, doping is largely unreported and virtually unchecked. A report from the National Institute of Drug Abuse showed that in 2004, 3.5 percent of high school seniors had tried steroids, up from 2.5 percent in 2000. As dangerous as real steroids are for young people, experts believe kids also face threats from chemical concoctions that are marketed without federal regulation and with no testing for either safety or efficacy. Making a banned steroid into a new and unregulated substance takes some serious science, but it can lead to a huge payday. The difference between the banned precursor androstenedione and legal variants, experts said, can be as small as a single atom removed from its molecule in the lab. Marketers also scale the chemical chain that occurs naturally in the body. Androstenedione, for example, is produced in the body where it is converted to testosterone. The body makes andro from another chemical, dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA. Want some DHEA? No problem. It can be bought legally just about anywhere. "One big loophole that kids have figured out is that there are steroid precursors that are being developed all the time. They might have to take a little more, but they get the same effect," said Arthur Grollman, a physician and professor of medicine and pharmacology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Grollman said chemists constantly search for new formulas that can mimic the effects of steroids. While federal law bans non-prescription sale of a specific list of steroids and some precursors, it does nothing to regulate new chemicals. "These guys are good chemists. ... Give them three weeks and they've got themselves a new steroid or steroid precursor," Grollman said. Steroid precursors are drugs that boost testosterone in the body, just like steroids. The best known precursor is the prohormone androstenedione, which McGwire acknowledged using as he powered his way to a record-breaking home run performance in 1998. While "andro" was later banned by baseball and by the federal government, other prohormones remain available, many of which are the first cousins of prohibited substances. The Web site legalsteroids.com offers pseudo-steroids that are combinations of various prohormones. The products are sold by SDI-Labs, which is based in Lake Worth, Fla. Phone calls and e-mails to SDI were not returned. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., spent $280 for four bottles of these prohormone cocktails, including bottles of D-Bol and Winni-V. Both bottles contain the bogus warning: "This product contains anabolic steroids." The labels list various chemicals and herbs such as caffeine and milk thistle extract, along with legal prohormones, misspellings of banned substances and apparently made-up names. Instead of androstenedione, for example, the bottles list "androstein" and "androsten." D-Bol is said to be methandostenol and Winni-V is cyclostanozol, two apparently bogus chemical compound names. Notwithstanding the company's claims -- D-Bol, for example, will make you "bigger than big, leaner than lean, stronger than strong and badder than any bad ass" -- products marketed by SDI-Labs don't fool the Internet's steroid experts. "SDI Labs obviously is not selling real steroids," one poster said. "Just crap. Expensive crap, but crap nonetheless," added another. Grollman, the SUNY physician, said "these things are sold as supplements with virtually no government regulation. They don't have to label it to say if it's toxic. They don't have to say anything." |
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