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| Drugs in Sports - Fact or Fallacy? |
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I am about to embark on a highly sensitive (for some) and controversial topic here, one that in my opinion needs attention, focus, and the utmost honesty from all of us. The one thing I will not do here is to target or aim biased judgment towards particular individuals in any competitive sports as to “who is using” or “who is on”. I will, however, mention specific sports and how they have evolved with drugs, by fact.
I myself am and consider myself to be an “Old School Physical Culturist and Strongman” who has competed on a local level in modern strongman contests. I am also here to share my 17 years of experiences in and out of the gym as well as thoughts with you, along with some hard core facts on the modern day drug scene. Many may think of this article as “trash can material” and others may in fact bear with me and have the proper chord struck in them. For the latter I invite you to ponder in your mind what I am going to share with you and if you are an athlete, admit to yourself at least the truth of the fallen nature of all sports today. DRUGS! Now, at one time I was not as opposed to drugs nearly as much as I have become with the years. I viewed drugs as the necessary medicine to accomplish physical goals and to take the body to the outmost level of performance. What I learned is that although there is truth to the incredible effects and achievements various performance enhancing drugs can help bring an individual to, the sobering pause for me was losing a friend of mine in the swirl of the medications drugs. He accomplished an incredible physique that 99% of amateur bodybuilders would envy. His physique was quickly lost when his health went sour, and fast! All his training did not help him from the spiral which soon led to his death. When I started training in a “commercial” gym at 15 years of age most of the ‘dudes’ were HUGE and I wanted to be the same. I had the honor and pleasure at the beginning of my training career to have the “Strongest Woman in the World” as my training partner (trust me she was) for two years and as a young fellow I learned what it meant to train HEAVY from her. Well all these big dudes in the gym intrigued me but after a while I started asking questions like “why am I not getting BIG like them I am training just as hard and even harder with better genetics then most of them” Well it wasn’t until I had some honest friends tell it to me straight when I got it clear as a bell. They were all taking steroids. Just about all of them would insist they were “natural”. Meanwhile I or any of my natural buddies could not look like that even with 50 years of training with all the best foods and supplements. The point? There is a BIG lie and “cover up” going on here. Athletes use drugs. Period. People are paid big bucks to lie to us and say things like “they are natural”, or that “they are closely monitored for anabolic drugs”. Don’t buy it for a second! Question was, was I ready and willing to go that route? Well the truth is I was curious but also scared. There was this guy, let’s call him Fred, Fred was a nice guy to me, he was a friend/acquaintance that I hung out with after workouts and talked a lot to. Our conversations were mostly about fast cars and his personal problems. I hated hearing that and I never let him get me down even though I believed him to a degree. After a while he stopped bothering me to “try a cycle” and just accepted that being natural was what I preferred after all. Fred had a physique that looked like the dudes in the bodybuilding magazines, he competed on a National level previously in bodybuilding and certainly looked like an “experiment gone wrong” to me. Fred walked away very sorrowful, to the point where he wondered if living anymore was even worth it. How could a guy who is 5’9 250 pounds and “ripped” to the bone come off all that stuff and lose 100 pounds of what he worked for, drugged for, and ate for, all the last 20 years and accept it? He expressed his depression to me continually, I was as much as a listener as possible and I tried to comfort the distraught 37 year old friend of mine. About a week after that, a guy that bought drugs from him regularly called me. It was a call that had me crying out loud. “John, Fred shot himself in the head last night. He is dead”. My heart sped up to about 300 and I needed to be alone for a while to absorb what had happened. I realized that Fred’s depression was one that cost him his life. Some argue and say “you don’t need to take ‘steroids to become suicidal” and this I can’t argue against. However, if we are to be brutally HONEST here and the users themselves would at least be willing to admit to the “high low depression” associated with these medications then we could understand more clearly the problem here. Not all who use cocaine or heroin will become suicidal either will they? Of course not, but let me ask you this, will it not bring them closer to the edge? Certain rock stars, celebrities, and high society types have been seen to be on this side of the coin using cocaine mixed in with other concoctions have they not? I had MANY training partners that used tons of drugs over the years, a few of them were my good friends prior to usage and once they “went on” for a while they became everything but who I once knew them to be, as to the point where I had to end my friendships with many of them because of intolerable, new arrogant, aggressive and selfish behavior. Now I am not your typical “academic armchair theorist” here but rather a guy who has spent MANY years in over a dozen gyms and also had friends and acquaintances that used tons of steroids and all sorts of performance enhancing and recreational drugs so if you think I don’t know what I am talking about or just being biased that is fine- but I speak from close up, hands-on experience. I am a REALIST, one that is brutally honest in this regard, too much so for many others. But I feel it’s important to inform you about the TRUTH, the way I have seen it and the way it remains a fact if you’re willing to face it today. This generation of sportsmanship is more drugs induced than all previous ones combined. Is this okay with you? Is it okay that we endorse all this activity and just let it be? Do we actually know the FACTS or even care for that matter? Well you tell me what you think, when will we get it in our thick heads that NO drug is complimentary to health and the well being of the body, but who mentioned or cares about health right? This is about WINNING; not living better! BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER, or LOOKING a certain way that’s what it’s about right? The next thing that few understand is what true HEALTH means. Are you content if you get a perfectly clean bill of health from your “physician” but you in fact don’t feel healthy still? Do you have such blind faith that if he says your “healthy” according to all appearances and your blood results that you ARE even though you feel otherwise? Do you trust his “bill of health” then? You tell me. I once read something from one of the original fathers of medicine (yes before drugs were around when “nutrient therapy” was taught in medical schools, way before the vested interests of the oh-so-wealthy pharmaceutical and petroleum industries flourished) and it went like this. “Few truly understand what health means because most are too busy killing themselves slowly” Do you actually believe “drug testing” is a fool-proof way to determine who is using or not using drugs in any sport? If so you are asleep. So called “drug testing” was put into place to make it look like someone is trying to do something and to soothe the public, so in the end we all say “look they are testing, so now we all know these athletes must be natural” A total buffoon can beat a drug test unless he is set up to get caught and surely that has happened not only to Ben Johnson but others also. I have known MANY men and women beat hundreds of drug tests while laughing at them along the way so trust me; “testing” does not stop or even slow drug usage. Or does it tell us who’s “natural”. It’s what I call “a political front” controlling what people think is a powerful tool of manipulation. It is just another form of “mind control” that we as consumers of the mass media; we as the common man and woman are led by. Society is being “dumbed down” in many respects and the average sports fan often swallows the “testing” trash, hook, line, and sinker. The athletes themselves know full well they are drugged to oblivion and either don’t care about the potential health risks or do what most others do and that is LIVE A LIE! I have trained international caliber athletes and they even lie to ME, their trainer about what they do. Now, would I train a “juiced” athlete? Of course! I am a trainer. Do I support or endorse drug use? NEVER! I myself LOVE physical strength and real health on all levels. What is sad for me is to see men and women take drugs and become “disconnected” from their body in such a way where it could cost them a lot, later on, and in many instances sooner rather than later. Certain athletes and other “users” that have read thus far may think to themselves that I am going too far with this, that I am an extremist and then some, or that I got it all wrong. Well to them I would have to say that what I am presenting here is not only my 17 years in the circuit of gyms and hanging out with MANY users some of which were close friends but the opinion of many others as well that I have consulted with before writing this article. My sources include people far older and wiser than myself that saw the modern day transition from the 1950’s until now and what has happened in sports. If you still don’t trust or admit to these facts now, I certainly hope one day this knowledge will help you. One “athlete” experience I want to share with you here. About 4 years ago I went to watch a National level strongman competition. I observed the competitors and knew a few personally. What I noticed was that several of them were inhaling oxygen after each event. I understand the rationale behind this but after talking to one of the competitors he told me that “if some of us don’t do this we tend to pass out” Does this sound normal? Ambient oxygen in the air is about 20% so taking blasts of 100% to keep conscious after revving up your heart to 220 is safe, and a good idea for an acne ridden 350 pound man? Once again who mentioned anything about health right? Or what is really mean? TRUE that doesn’t matter now, yes I forgot! This observation and a few others led me to realize and believe that competitors are unhealthy, and will do anything to cope, and to get an edge. A few years ago a poll was taken in the U.S to see just how far athletes were willing to go with regards to pushing the limits of their health and body. I was shocked at the results! 200 various pro athletes were asked if they could in fact achieve first place in their particular sport, enjoy the glory of being the best, all the wealth and fame that accompanies it, would they take it all now but give up their health entirely in just ten short years and/or possibly lay down their life from all the drug abuse would they accept all the vain glory now regardless of the horrific and inevitable downfall? That was the question! What were the results? 89% said YES!!!!! I had to rub my eyes after that one and reread it!! Doesn’t this explain the increased incidence of heart problems in sports with so many athletes and even non athletes taken massive doses of stimulants nowadays to get ahead of the rest at any cost? I was watching the WSM (World Strongest Man) competition from various years from the year 2000 and on. During one event I saw a competitor faint 3 times! He got up and kept trying to keep going! Was he just having a “bad day” (when YOU have a bad day and push yourself do you pass out?) or did he in fact have an underlying problem that wasn’t being addressed? What do you think? When a 25 year old NHL hockey player needs a “defibrillator” to revive him on the bench, what went wrong? Well let’s examine yet another unexplainable tragedy which I was a witness to. At a local gym that I was a trainer in I was about 100-feet from a 31 year old “Tri-athlete” that was running on the treadmill. He collapsed and died on the spot from a massive heart attack! So this brought the entire gym population to the following conclusion. If a supposed “healthy” man who runs 20K daily (12 miles) can puke out his heart on the treadmill then it can happen to anyone of us right? After all he was “healthy” wasn’t he? My question is, define health for me? What was he using? Cocaine, heroin, or God-knows what, to run beyond what ordinary humans can? What does “health” in fact mean then? Does it mean NO apparent disease that your “doc” can see or diagnose you with so this means your healthy then? I submit to you; how can anyone claim to be healthy and yet suddenly die exercising? Please answer that for me! We are fools to think that healthy athletes DIE, with regularity, at their peaks! I spoke to several members in that gym and said that unless they knew this man on a personal level not to speculate about how “healthy” he was. He could have been doing “coke” “speed”, or any other demon’s list of stimulants, every day; who are we to know? The going belief was that he was “healthy” because he ran 20K daily and had a resting heart rate of 40. Dead at 31 while training some health. The one thing that always busts my gut in laughter is the following. Anytime an athlete suffers an ailment or even death it is said that his/her condition was “congenital” BULL!! Would I deny that this individual may have had a weakness in that area if it in fact could be proved medically? Does it not insult our intelligence, the astronomical rate of congenital defects our poor athletes have today? Generally, athletes have marvelous genes! They are BETTER than most people, in part due to above average genetics. After all, anyone can take ‘roids, but few will be champions! It is obvious that at the ages of 25-30 if you drop from a heart attack exercising there is usually a little more than a “congenital” condition at fault, regardless of what the doctors and other “experts” say. Especially for an athlete who has been training for years already and at an elite level. Now that we are on the topic, why, this last 10-20 years do we have so many “congenital” problems? Throughout all of our history congenital problems were RARE. Today, autism, asthma, cancer, diabetes, and a barrage of diseases are common. A hundred years ago they were rare. Where are we going wrong? Today’s medical communities say “today we are living longer”. Really? If we are, it is due to knowledge of basic hygiene. It is due to an increase in our food availability. It is from having a proper sewer system. A hundred years ago, in Canada and the US, the bathroom was an outhouse or even a pit! Yet medicine lays claim to helping us, with their drug based “care”. Drugs promote health and life? Since when?! My dear reader look back into the 17th century and the early parts of the 18th and you will see how many lived to their 90’s and beyond. The later parts of the 18th and beginnings of the 19th century were plagued by wars. The average age of a man in the early 1900’s was only 43 due to the death rate in war not of illness, cancer or heart attacks, things such as these were virtually unheard of! Let’s get our facts straight! How does all this relate to what I am saying about drugs in sports? Well examine that ALL drugs are harmful, anyone who uses any type of drug prescription or otherwise could express this to you if they didn’t fail to disconnect themselves so much from the feedback and natural intelligence within them and their body and to override the blind faith imparted on them by their local quack and modern day “health expert” So I ask again how does one define “health” exactly? Does it mean to just coast through existence or does it mean to just be free of disease? Should it mean that you actually FEEL healthy, in that when you wake up in the morning you are “good to go” without the artificial aids and stimulants like COFFEE or your latest Red Bull body abuse drink? How many of us can function RAW without any type of stimulant such as coffee, pop, red bull concoctions or even caffeinated teas truthfully? When was the last time you or any you know felt a sense of glow, well being, and strength, coursing through your body, letting you know all your cylinders were firing? The last time I checked not many of us! So, if we need “gear” to even move out of bed and into our every day chores, then what are we to think and say about health? Something to consider for sure, if we try to truly define what “health” means then we should take into consideration these things. Go beyond that “clean bill of health” from your local Dr. Quack! Stimulants in sports and many other drugs are rampant today and viewed as a necessary supplement to function at higher levels. When I examine closely the “drug” arsenal of a typical athlete it’s no wonder that heart complications and other ailments plague athletes today. Remember I am talking from some hands on experiences with several individuals and not just giving you theories as to the “maybes” about it. Can I conclude for example that steroids alone are the cause of the deaths, suicides, and many complications athletes face today in sports? Of course not. Why didn’t yesterday’s’ competitive folk have as many heart related problems as the modern day ephedrine joneser? Well that for me is self explanatory in that “stimulants” have certainly contributed to some of these modern day crises. Do I have any scientific proof? “Science must be the servant and not the master of man” Keep that in mind when you examine junk sciences. All you have to do is open your eyes, anytime in the last 20-odd years and see the transition. Anabolic/Androgenic steroids alone can never cause such profound and repeated cardiac implications, never before have they even though alone they are harmful enough in several ways. When combined with cocaine (many athletes do this) and other powerful stimulants then one is to wonder “which part of the experiment went wrong” I once trained with a world class strength athlete that had set sight on reaching records in the Guinness books. He and I hung out one time and I asked to take his heart rate, he thought I was strange but said “sure” it was 60 then just before a workout one day I asked if I could do the same and I found it at 90! I then asked him if he takes stimulants and he said “SURE” . I also asked him if his heart felt fine and he said “well sometimes I feel as though something wrong is going on inside me with infrequent beats and arrhythmias but aside from that I am healthy”! I said are you? So define “health” to me then? He got offensive and said “forget this shit lets workout! As you can see I have observed scenarios such as these many times with athletes just shrugging off REALITY. We can ignore reality. But it never ignores us! One thing is for sure here in my mind and that is out of all the ones who use any type of drugs versus the ones that “visibly” suffer from it due to apparent symptoms may need to be closely examined and concluded then that they are “suffering” in one way or other this is for sure. They are ALL compromised in health. The athletes themselves may not agree but are they being honest with themselves? Does smoking tobacco guarantee early death? Of course not, but does it guarantee compromised health? Of course it does. Point is ALL drugs compromise health- some more than others, of course. Drugs are “pathogenic”. They are not “adaptogenic” Tobacco is considered to be quite toxic but not “lethally” toxic so in fact you may live many years and support the tobacco industry while slowly putting one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel! Before you listen you’re your “doctor” consider that a quick view of historical records clearly reveals the largest smoking propaganda campaigns back in the early 1940’s doctors were promoting smoking as a “healthy endeavor” Today they advocate certain if not all prescribed drugs as “healthy” Why am I bringing all this up? Well I see a parallel with just “recreational” drugs for leisure or a “high” and performance enhancing ones to boost power for the chosen sport. A person likes to live by his or her image especially competitive athletes so as they climb the ladder to physical prowess they gain momentum with the drug arsenal and it only gains momentum with them. I once knew a competitive bodybuilder and the facts he presented to me were nothing short of shocking. The drug dose determines how far you can go in terms if status or rank! Local guys use “this much”. State or Provincial guys use “that much”. National guys all use at least “that much”. All increasing dosage levels, of course. So he put it to me this way, “if you want to be on a national level you need to be on around 1500-2000mg of testosterone daily and 15-10 IUs of GH as well” not to mention several other chemicals that would make a pit-bull gag! Does anyone know or realize how much testosterone a healthy male makes daily? 4-10 mgs so you can do the math and see what these men are taking. “To be pro is a whole other world” I was told, “the dose is at least 1.5 times that”. This is just an example and not to just center bodybuilders out. I at one time enjoyed the sport of bodybuilding but seeing firsthand the amount of drugs involved turned me away entirely. The art of body sculpting always had some appeal to me but the drugs involved are preposterous to say the least. Strength sports are just as guilty, my good friend whose uncle was a world champion power lifter in the 80’s said that there is WAY more steroids in power lifting and strength related sports then bodybuilding. Now this is a scary statement considering the doses I gave you from a horse’s mouth, word for word, above. So for those of you that think these are self “fabricated” statistics they are not my dear reader but sound factuality. The problem is that mostly all who use will bet their own mother and swear they don’t take a thing. I wish I could lock them up in a cell and just watch them through a glass. Feed them as much food as they want. Let them train however they want. Monitor them the whole time, and watch them shrink, say 50 pounds of muscle or more. Well since we can’t do this we must take their word for it, then? Well use your common sensibility I say, did men look that way before? Do you actually think we have evolved in training methods in such a way as to make men literally twice as big as yesterday? Or do you think the latest amino acid can put 100 rock hard pounds of muscle on you in several years of training? Well YOU can determine the Truth for yourself. I already have made my observations and conclusions. Aside from being a trainer I also work in a high school. When I see 15 year old boy gain 30 pounds in 2 months I have an “eye” for what is going on. I have seen some 18 year olds that look like they have been drugged for years already. Fact is they learn to lie about what they do at this young age and feel it’s necessary to hide it for obvious moral reasons. Coaches and trainers are also heavily involved in this whole self destructive cycle; they support and endorse the usage as part of the necessary “program” So after presenting my humble facts to you I would clearly submit that drugs are a major problem in sports and that they are here to stay and grow along the way as the athletes do. Some of you may lash out at me and say “you can’t say all athletes take drugs these are isolated cases you are talking about” well you are absolutely correct I could never say that they all do but my educated guess would be that over 99% on a competitive level take drugs and a still alarming amount of simple “gym buffers” also.. It would be like me telling you that “not every alcoholic gets drunk”. I can only prove to you what I have seen with my own two eyes, talked to and trained world class athletes as well as acquainted myself with MANY users who are clients of mine. For me it’s a sad state of affairs but what is one to do? Well the best thing I can do is lead by example and I always do just that, although I feel as though I am a “dinosaur” that roams alone. Drugs are so rampant today that your average “gym buffer” is on stuff and usually much more than you would think. If you were to get any athlete to be able to admit to you he or she uses all sorts of drugs to attain their goals you would have accomplished a lot considering most would first pathologically lie and say “I am clean”. But if you succeed in their admittance to the usage that’s good, but one thing you will not get most if any of them to admit is the downfalls they suffer continually due to these potent medications. Does a crack user admit to the adverse effects from the drug? Usually not, do they admit it to themselves ever? Well we can’t really know the depths of each person’s conscious but I have seen many users deny outright to themselves for years that there aren’t any adverse effects at all from usage even though the alarm bells and apparent signs are loud and clear. As I mentioned before, if steroids were the only apparent danger today we wouldn’t be nearly as bad off as with all the other drugs on stage today combined. Stimulants and all alike pose and have posed a MAJOR threat to ones mental, cardiovascular, immunological and even spiritual health and well being. Years ago I used to use ephedrine and caffeine before my workouts, aside from feeling like I was spaced out on something really euphoric my workouts were GREAT. When I tried to come off this stuff eventually from visible burnout and overtraining I found myself very depressed with decreased energy levels, major headaches and unable to train without them anymore. What had happened? ALL stimulants including COFFEE tax the adrenal glands HEAVILY. Sure they increase your heart output but at a HUGE cost. Eventually heart health suffers, your adrenals will be so far depleted that it may take many months to recover from all the stress or even years once you hit rock bottom but who would know this since so many live on the stuff and it’s advertised as seemingly okay and healthy? Let me share yet another deranged scenario with you with a former training partner of mine. A bodybuilder who also had competed in power lifting, he would snort a line of cocaine before and after his workout as well as take other stimulants. Did I know this by fact? SURE he tried to get me on this shit! Was he the only one doing this? NO! It’s common place! I do not want to take a single thing away from power lifting; I admire all types of strength with a passion. But come on, people- Wake Up and Smell the Coffins! Let’s examine this guy’s history. First came the ‘steroids, then the stimulants then the cocaine and then you have the recipe for disaster! It was a horrible experience, one that I am glad I can talk about and possibly relate to those who will admit to all this and try to do something about it all. I had to cut off most if not all of my previous gym friends if I was to overcome the self destructive behavior that was so frequent around me. So what really happens to someone who stops taking all stimulants eventually? Lowered thyroid output, severely depressed and depleted adrenal glands, and headaches. Lethargy, low energy levels, weight gain (fat) mood swings, just to name a few! Is this enough to discourage then? I hope so! Well, why ever come off this stuff and not just keep taking it indefinitely? I once heard a saying that totally makes sense to the logically sound mind and this applies to ALL drugs and goes like this; “EITHER YOU STOP THEM NOW OR THEY WILL STOP YOU LATER” Today I still train alone and have made the best progress ever in the last 5 years doing so. Also being an old school dinosaur I don’t need to train in a commercial gym so I train outdoors constantly the way we all did before “gyms” became known. I want to conclude this long winded article by saying that if YOU don’t think there is a problem with YOU using any type of drug/s then YOU won’t find a reason to stop, will YOU? If you do realize you need to get on the right path, that’s the first HUGE step. The second is to come up with an effective strategy to quit. It’s as easy, and hard as that. Step two has to be well thought out for sure, if you’re a competitive athlete then it’s much harder for you because you must continue to perform at an expected level in order to maintain status. But let me ask you this one more time as it really DOES matter to me and it SHOULD matter to YOU also. What about your health, if not so much now later? Oh yes that’s right “health” is of secondary importance. It is all about meeting the “mark”. Well then if that’s the case then reread what I said about “few know what true health means because they are too busy killing themselves slowly” I really hope this article offers consolation to some out there because I have shared some REAL facts of my own and others which concretely address a major problem that has gained much momentum over the last 30 years and that is DRUGS in sports and exercise. Why am I totally against drugs anyway? All drugs? YES I am against all drugs because your “health” is the most important temporal blessing you physically possess, if drugs were healthy I would endorse them all the way but the day that happens is the day cars run on water and not fossil fuel which is when? NEVER! Your body is your soul’s temple. Remember you are your own boss, who is and should be in charge of YOU, who governs you anyway you or your vices? A real person should have control of these things at all times, sure it’s a struggle but if we are to say “we are in charge” then we must once again address the problem first while being BRUTALLY honest with ourselves. Be truthful first of all to yourself. Final conclusion, GOD always has the final say as to when and how YOU will depart this life, just as he has given us “free will” to choose our path spiritually/religiously, we also have the “free will” on how we take care of our body with regard to what we choose to put into to it or not. Accidental death so to speak (let's face the raw facts here people, with GOD there are no accidents) surely we may not live long indeed as hidden dangers are everywhere but what we can do is re-educate ourselves and take control of our health to live as long as what God has built the human temple to do so. “Till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art. And unto dust shalt thou return” Gen 3:19 No one knows this only HE who is “The way the truth and the LIFE” John 14:6 Now some HIGHLY recommended reading PLEASE read a book called “Dinosaur Training; Lost Secrets of Strength and Development” by Brooks Kubik Visit www.anthonydipasquale.com for the TRUTH on nutrition as this man is Canada’s BEST nutritionist and highly ranked holistic practitioner. Best of luck with your health from here on if you have any questions with anything that I can assist you with please contact me! John Hadzi, |

