PEDs: Sports and Recreational Usage

The way society is nowadays, instant gratification trumps patience and growth over a long developmental period.

We are all guilty at some point or another in our lives and it doesn’t have to be limited to one particular aspect.

I bring up this topic as I am an avid fitness freak and someone who also has a passion for sports. Athletes have faced this battle with ego and quick fixes since the inception of sport.

Everyone is always trying to gain an advantage. It doesn’t matter what they do in life, where they live, how much money they have or any other external circumstances. Finding the “edge” that someone needs has been a goal of almost every human being that has ever been on Earth. Everyone, in some aspect, has cheated.

Whether it’s that pop quiz in high school that came out of nowhere, or the person you were in a relationship with that you supposedly “loved” and decided that it wasn’t just them who you wanted to see or if it was knowing that someone was better than you at something and you wouldn’t stop at anything to “one-up” them in some aspect.

Cheating happens every day. Everywhere. And will never stop.

Because most people don’t view it as cheating.

As a former athlete and avid follower of sports at all levels, the topic of performance enhancing drugs hits home in particular. Drug testing has become such a staple of athletics because the organizations that run respective sports know those using are out there and need to be exposed and punished.

But do the guys – and girls – who use and get caught truly ever learn their lesson?

Courtesy: OGpaper.com

Marion Jones is a great example of someone who got caught, was punished and her career as an Olympic athlete was nevermore. She was quite possibly on the pathway to becoming the most decorated female athlete in the history of the United States of America… until she got caught.

She had to look at every camera, speak into every microphone and tell all of the little girls and boys who probably idolized her and viewed her as a role model and say more or less, “I’m a liar, a cheater and a fraud.”

There is no integrity in that. Knowing that she was better than everyone else not because of her God-given abilities, but because she decided that the only way she could be the best was to cheat and gain an advantage because her ego would be bruised if she wasn’t the best, best-looking or most successful.

Jones faced jail time, was stripped of her medals and has become one of the most drastic rise-and-fall stories in track and field and sport in general.

Former New York Yankees and Houston Astros pitcher Andy Petitte is another example of a guy who disappointed a lot of people when he was caught.

He was outed, by the Mitchell Report and former Major League pitcher Jason Grimsley, about his use of steroids, HGH and other performance enhancing drugs. He admitted to drug use back in 2002 for “recovery purposes” as opposed to performance-enhancement as he suffered an elbow injury and felt obligated to return to his teammates earlier than his recovery time allowed.

But he lied as well.

Courtesy: NJ.com

He forgot to mention, until later down the road that he did in fact use HGH again twice in the same day for the supplement that was prescribed for his seriously ill father.  Just read the last part of that sentence again… please. Disgusting? Pathetic?

A role model. An idol to some. An idol to me as a kid growing up as a left-handed pitcher and a fan and student of the game.

Reputation tarnished. Integrity gone. Image ruined. All because he had to be better than everyone else.

Richard Sherman was initially suspended four games in November of 2012 for a positive test of performance-enhancing substances. In his case, the drug of choice was Adderall – a drug designed to improve focus.

A drug designed to improve focus is something, if prescribed by a doctor, is allowed by the NFL, but otherwise not.

Sherman found a way to prove his case and show that he wasn’t cheating and won his case.

But there will always be speculation as to whether or not he and most NFL players are legit… and it’s mostly because Sherman is a premiere box office player.

Courtesy: USA TODAY Sports

What if he was a backup? A bench-warmer who never thought about the field? Would his suspension be appealed? Would he lose game checks like Baltimore Ravens cornerback Asa Jackson did because he was just short of missing his prescription date?

There’s always going to be speculation and Sherman even says it in this article written last April by the Huffington Post.

But Adderall isn’t the only drug of speculation in the NFL and it shouldn’t be.

Prime example: Look at this picture of Adrian Peterson…

Courtesy: Muscle & Fitness

Look at this picture of movie star Sylvester Stallone – an avid HGH using celebrity – at age 37 and 67

Courtesy: StrengthFighter.com

Who is there to believe?

I used to believe in athletes and say that they did everything the right way, but I was also naive and thought they deserved the benefit of the doubt.

Then, there’s the fitness/bodybuilding industry. Where cheating isn’t viewed as cheating, but it’s accepted.

People who dub themselves as “athletes” yet they don’t know what it means to be an athlete because their “sport” is all about looks, ego and being better physically than everyone else. I can respect what they do because it is something I will never succumb myself to and nor will I ever think what they do is right because they are shedding years off of their life because of how they treat their bodies.

Girls and guys alike in the “bodybuilding profession”, if you want to call it that, lie every single day that they wake up, brush their teeth and look in the mirror. They show you a meal plan, the supplements they take and tell you stories about their journey, yet almost always they will omit their use of HGH, anabolic steroids, EPO and other PEDs because they know these substances are what gave them the edge over the “common man” because they have no desire to be average.

And it’s because they are doing nothing but merely selling a product. They are selling themselves because they are a product.

I don’t get when I see people like this, and also those who workout as recreational hobby and use, make the decision to stick a needle in themselves in order to change the way God intended them to be constructed. I understand that it is their career and since everyone is actually using it isn’t deemed as cheating. But why risk shedding off tend years off of your life or destroying your body more than treating it like a temple?

I am an avid fitness-goer and do-it-yourselfer – I’ve been working out hard for 10 years – and I have never once stuck a needle in me, but it’s not to say I haven’t been offered.

I was sitting at the lunch room in college when a buddy of mine – a frat boy focused on looks only and not satisfaction – offered me syringes of insulin… at the lunch table. Needless to say, I got up and walked away. I played football with guys who needed to get gains on their bench, squat and overall body mass in order to get on the field and stopped at nothing if they knew they could avoid NCAA drug testing in some way… even if it meant faking an injury. Just last Saturday I was at my home gym – a recreational gym that isn’t full of bodybuilders and “meatheads” – and was offered a “light five-week cycle of testosterone” because I have the body for it according to these two gentleman I spoke with.

It is everywhere and no one is clean anymore. Not athletes. Not regular people. Not anyone.

Do I supplement with my workouts? Absolutely, but I would never belittle and degrade myself to a level where I felt my look was more important than my career, my family and my friends just because I wanted to look or be better than everyone else.

It really hit home when I found out that one of the people at my gym, who trains people, takes HGH and overtrains every singe day because they know their body can recover at an exceptional and inhuman level. How is that a role model for those they are going to be training in feeling like they do it the right way?

It isn’t. They wake up in the mirror every day and say, “I like the way I look, but I got here because of what I did and not by doing it the right way.”

The sad part of America and athletics today is instant gratification is more important than integrity and hard work. You can show up to your job all the time, work hard and do the right thing and still achieve better than everyone else in your respective company. But for most people, that is too hard and we as Americans don’t like hard because that means we have to try.

Courtesy: LaxAllStars.com