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Drugs
by Dave
Friday, December 21, 2007
If you're like me, you are pretty disheartened by the Mitchell Report on steroid and performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball. We don't need to discuss it much now - I just can't do it. The only thing I want to say is I always knew in my heart that performance enhancing drug use was pervasive in baseball. The Mitchell Report was really just a reminder to me that this beast was out there.
Recently, a discussion thread on a softball forum I read involved someone posting something about the report, others reacting to the original post, one suggesting women only take steroids as part of weight-loss efforts, and finally someone asking "what has this got to do with softball?" Someone else posted "there is not a steroid issue in softball" so go over to the baseball forum! That's a bit of an optimistic view of performance enhancing drugs.
I didn't have to search very deeply to find a reference to an NCAA steroid survey which questions the conventional wisdom that girls, for some reason, just don't use performance enhancing drugs. I found the reference here. It says, in part, "In the NCAA survey, <1% of female athletes used anabolic steroids; softball players showed the highest use (0.9%). This value is consistent with the results of some other studies, while others suggest that the rate of use is higher (Strauss et al., 1985; Strauss & Yesalis, 1991; Cordova, 1996). Terney and McLain (1990) found that 3.9% of female high-school athletes ... reported taking steroids.
So, there you have it. Girls do use anabolic steroids, the rate of usage is debatable, and their use is believed to be highest among softball players. For that reason I will write a bit about them today.
The first I ever heard of steroids involved the East German female swim team. I swam competitively and was an avid fan of the sport. It offended me that the East Germans used drugs to beat the greatest swim team in the world, the U.S. team. From what I could tell, those darn communists were the only ones trying the trick. I thought they were basically doing it to make women more like men in terms of muscle mass development in training. It never occurred to me that men might use the drugs too.
The only other experience I had with steroids involved a kid with whom I grew up and played football. We were on the same football team for about 5 years. We used to hang out some when we weren't practicing. He was a great kid but a better football player. He was very strong and hit like a mack truck. As we grew older and entered high school, we remained friends until I quit football. Early in our high school careers, he continued to be a hard hitting and outstanding football player. I quit the sport sue to injuries. He experienced some injuries but stayed with it. As we entered our senior year, it became apparent that this kid had been training more than anyone else I knew. We began referring to him as "George of the Jungle." He was bigger than his body seemed capable of carrying. His musculature was cut up like that of a body builder. He also started getting into more fights than anyone else. We all got into fights, perhaps even frequently, but this kid was almost constantly getting into big fights.
I lost track of the fellow and then I learned that, after high school, he ran a "nautilus" gym where many local athletes, high school and college, came to train. More than 10 years subsequently, I heard that my friend had been arrested for steroid possession and sales. I don't know the details but the rumor went something like he had been supplying most of the county's elite athletes with performance enhancing drugs through his training gym for several years. I believe he may have done some prison time for his offenses but I can't be sure.
About twenty years after our mutual high school graduation, I ran into someone who had seen the guy someplace. He told of an emaciated person who looked easily ten to twenty years older than anyone else he had encountered from our class. He had lost most of his mobility and was now "walking" around by using those crutches which wrap around your biceps. The guy I ran into said he had spoken with the now crippled ex-football star and learned that his knees and leg muscles were completely shot as a result of his intense training and steroid abuse. He could no longer "walk" more than twenty feet before he had to stop. And that's an approximately 40 year old, once extremely vibrant, athletic guy.
Aside from steroid abuse by East German swimmers and high school football stars, I was made aware of one other drug abuse story involving athletes who used the drugs to enhance performance. Another high school football buddy of mine ended his career playing for a successful division 3 program. He was not the sort of fellow to exaggerate. He told me what it was like to play big time college football (although the time period I'm speaking of is a very long time ago). He told of athletes in the locker room before games "shooting up" amphetamines and then working themselves into an almost insane frenzy before running out to take the field.
I found these stories of amphetamine use a little spooky but was comforted but his insistence that he had never engaged in this. Still, it struck me that none of the drug abusers used the drugs because they believed for a moment that they had shots to play pro football. They would never even get looked at by a pro scout. They did this only as a means to hopefully play the game better so they could win meaningless contests. They needed no other motivation to abuse dangerous hard drugs!
I cannot speak to the accuracy of the Mitchell Report. I always knew it was out there. I totally believe steroids destroyed my childhood friend's life. I am hesitant to acknowledge the possibility that Div 3 college football players would abuse amphetamines. But with all the heavy use of steroids, HGH, amphetamines and who knows what else in major league baseball, I suppose all of these things are not just possibilities but rather reality. Then, when I read that a survey - where they ask a bunch of people for honest answers but where the answerers can easily lie if they suspect they might get caught - reports that almost a full 1% of all college softball players use performance enhancing drugs, I have to say that we ignore this at our own peril.
As we sit there watching our 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 year old daughters play a game we love, it is hard to imagine any of the players sitting quietly while a friend loads up the hypo, finds a vein and injects them. Maybe none of the players you watched last year used steroids. Still, girls do use the stuff, it can ruin their lives, and a shot at professional sports has nothing to so with it.
I don't know about you but I have a hard time visualizing my kids ever using any drugs. I can't picture them snorting cocaine, smoking marijuana, sneaking a beer, or any of that. Yet the odds are pretty high they'll do something at some point. My inability to visualize it is a pretty emotional approach. My intellect tells me otherwise. My parents never knew the half of what went on when I wasn't under their direct supervision. They were shocked when I told them about the friend who had been destroyed by steroids. They had known him for a long time and never would have suspected it. That's the way it is with kids, isn't it? So before you or I pooh pooh the possibility of our children experimenting with steroids, perhaps we better think a little more about it.Labels: parenting
Permanent Link: Drugs
 
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