Why Do Athletes Use Steroids?

Many children all across the United States and other countries try to replicate their favorite superstar athlete. Many athletes become the children’s idol and once the child learns that the athlete has cheated the game the athlete plays the child no longer looks up to the athlete. It is almost gotten to the point where no athlete that excels in a particular sport can be trusted. Every time a single athlete becomes great at their respective sport, speculation of steroid abuse immediately follows.

Athletes are always searching for ways to enhance their performance. Recently, beginning in the 1950s, that search has included the use of illegal substances like steroids and growth hormones. Illegal substances have been used widely by athletes in hop es of achieving the desired Olympic gold medal or multi-million dollar contract. Some nations, for example the late East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, have mandated the use of steroids by their athletes. The downside of using those illegal substances is that because they are illegal, getting caught using them can lead to losing that coveted gold medal, a lifetime ban from sports, and a total loss of honor and dignity. This is why the search is now on to find some legal

Steroids and PED’s are used today in sports to help athletes gain muscle mass and strength. Other athletes use them to boost their athletic performance. Today, about 30 percent of college and professional athletes still use anabolic steroids, 10 to 20 percent of high school athletes use them (Lewis). There are many reasons why steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs shouldn’t be allowed in sports.

Steroids in sports has been one of the biggest controversial topics since 1904 when Olympic marathon runner, Thomas Hicks, used a mixture of brandy and strychnine and nearly died. However, the use of PED’s (performance enhancing drugs) dates all the back to 776 BC with the Ancient Greek athletes. In sports todays the question is whether or not these types of drugs should be banned from competition.

Abstract:  With the increase of competition has also come the need to become bigger and stronger than the opponent.  The use of steroids among athletes has caused the focus of the game to change.  No longer does an athlete want to win by doing their best, but they want to become bigger and have an advantage over the opponent.  Ultimately, all athletes feel that they need to use performance-enhancing drugs to compete at the same level. Despite all of the warnings and information on performance-enhancing drugs, athletes continue to use them and overlook the potential health risks associated with steroids.

First of all steroids can be incredibly harmful to those who take them. Conversely some types of steroids are used to help people with inflammatory conditions like chronic bronchitis. But those steroids are categorized as corticosteroids. These corticosteroids are not the same ones as the more harmful version: Anabolic steroids. Secondly Anabolic steroids are sometimes referred to as “Juice or “roids” are actually synthetic forms of the male hormone testosterone. This type of steroid can be used to legitimately to induce puberty or to help to who suffer from wasting diseases like AIDS or cancer.

The desire to compete — and win — is as old as history itself. From the beginnings of sport, athletes have sought out foods and potions to turn their bodies into winning machines. As early as 776 BCE, the very first Olympic games, there are records of attempts to increase testosterone levels (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”). Ancient Greek wrestlers ate vast amounts of meat to gain muscle mass, and Norse “Berserker” warriors took hallucinogenic mushrooms before battle. The first competitive athletes to be charged for doping, however, were swimmers in 1860s Amsterdam. Doping of all kinds, from caffeine to cocaine to anabolics quickly spread to other sports (“Anabolic Steroids, a Brief History”).

Former Notre Dame Football coach, Knute Rockne, once said, “Show me a good and gracious loser and I’ll show you a failure,” (“The Future of Steroids”). The importance of winning in sports and being the greatest has grown immensely. This unquenchable desire to be stronger, faster, and more agile than the opponent, has caused many athletes to stop at nothing to be the best; this pressure has caused athletes to take banned and illegal substances known as performance-enhancing drugs (Performance-enhancing drugs) to achieve maximum strength and speed. The use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs in sports has been obvious to many spectators and sports enthusiasts for quite some time now, and athletes who have been found guilty of taking

Throughout the history of athletics, humans have pursued new and innovative ways to construct better, faster, stronger athletes. Steroid use is one of the most popular choices among these athletes. Steroids, first created in the 1930s, are synthetic hormones that produce specific physiological effects on one's body (Center for Substance Abuse Research). Although the German scientists who discovered steroids did not intend its use for body building or creating better athletes, steroid use has developed into a controversial subject concerning the health of users and other moral issues. Overall, the use of steroids in athletics is physically and morally wrong because it essentially promotes the deterioration of the health of athletes and

“…medical researchers believe that between 1 and 3 million youths and adults have taken anabolic steroids in one form or another specifically to enhance their looks or athletic performances,” stated Nuwer (Nuwer, 61). As astounding as these figures are, the number of performance drug users is steadily increasing. With this progressively increasing numbers, it is projected that millions more will use steroids in the immediate future (Newer, 61). Athletes have always sought an advantage in competition even if ignoring the law and their health if necessary. Using drugs of any sort to facilitate an athlete’s athletic ability should be illegal. The use of performance enhancing drugs is not only detrimental to the user but it also creates an

Steroids is abused by a range of athletes and students. “In a 2002 National Institute of Drug Abuse study, 2.5% of 8th graders, 2.5% of 10th graders, and 4% of 12th graders admitted to using steroids at some time.” (Steroid Abuse Moves Into the Scholastic Arena, 2008) Steroids abuse is not only found in athletes but also those who struggle with body image.

In the days when steroids were only being used by body builders and professional wrestlers, stories about performance enhancing drugs could only be found on the back pages of the newspapers. When former Oakland Raiders All-Pro Lyle Alzado admitted to steroid use in a 1991 Sports Illustrated article the whispers about what professional athletes were using steroids began to get louder. (Puma, 2005) Finally, in 2002, when Caminiti, a former MVP, came clean, two things were clear; athletes in all sports were using these drugs, and that they worked. The fact that steroid use had permeated our national pastime combined with the media explosion of the internet and 24 hour a day sports talk created a perfect storm which created the biggest sports story of the new millennium so far. However, two other facts remained clear, performance enhancing drugs were old news, and athletes in all sports from all over the world had been using them for years.

Almost every week, there is a new report of a major athlete getting caught for PED use. Throughout the history of sports, many athletes have tried gain an advantage on their competition. When done correctly, athletes improve their performance through rigorous training and hard work. As the years have progressed, athletes believe that they need an unfair advantage to succeed in a particular sport. This is what has caused the uprise in PED use. Steroids have been linked to most of the PED use in sports. Steroids are commonly known to cut body fat and increase a person's body tissue; however, they are terrible for your body. Steroids affect many parts of the human body. Most users only look at the near present when using steroids, but over time they can have a serious affect on the way a person lives. Jerry Adler, author of “Toxic Strength”, believes that “Steroids can have long-lasting and sometimes irreversible side effects on the body.” This is especially dangerous in teen users. Some programs around the world have high expectations, and sometimes athletes will turn to steroids to gain an edge in a certain sport. But the effects can be far-reaching and detrimental to a young athlete (“Global

Athletes have used performance enhancing drugs(PED) throughout history to increase personal performance and recover quicker. Although, there are many PEDs athletes use, two are used commonly among several athletes in many different professions of sports. Steroids and Human Growth Hormones are those two. Professional teams have specific tests for these two drugs, and the consequences can be severe if an athlete is caught using these substances illegally. The mix of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, which makes up steroids, cause significant weight gains, but consequently steroids are very harmful to the liver and can cause permanent damage “Anadrol 50”. Human Growth Hormones is a over the counter drug athletes use to recover faster, and to make strength gains rapidly “Haley Simon Human Growth Hormone”. Both of these performance enhancing drugs are a

Pledger 1 Mason Pledger Mrs. Daugherty English 9 Honors 20 March 2017 Performance Enhancers and Athletes Why would athletes even need to use performance enhancers? Some athletes use steroids to boost their strength. There are many health risks that steroids can cause. Things like irregular heartbeat and heart failure can occur. I think that athletes who steroids or other drugs to enhance their strength should have a harsher punishment. Athletes need to know not to use steroids because they can get serious health problems. “For athletes that do decide to take steroids on a regular basis, 80% of them show some form of biochemical abnormalities of the liver during medical testing” (“20 Incredible Statistics of Steroid Use in Professional Sports”).