Now that I am involved in something vaguely athletic--trying to dunk--and I have this forum, I can pop off about steroids. Let me begin by saying I think steroid use should absolutely be banned by the governing body of every sport in every land. First of all, anything that shrinks the testicles--gone. Beyond that they've been linked to rage, depression, cancer, various liver ailments ... the list goes on and on. They do far too much physical harm for their use to be sanctioned.
However, I have no quarrel with steroids' role in enhancing athletic performance. Let Marion Jones keep her gold medals, let Barry Bonds' home run record be asterisk free and get off Roger Clemens' back already. Have I missed something, or don't we want our athletes to try to enhance their performance? From what I understand, and, remarkably, I have read a thing or two about their effects, steroids are not a magic pill. It's not as if you can shoot your ass full of steroids, go to bed looking like Woody Allen and wake up with the pecs of Lou Ferrigno. You still have to work out like a bastard for weeks at a time. Steroids can help you with that; they reduce the recovery time after exercise. In other words, an athlete on steroids can work out harder and more often. Again, isn't that what we want our athletes to be doing? I'd rather our athletes spent all their time in the gym than, I don't know, killing dogs.
That's why I don't begrudge Marion and Barry the records they set while using steroids (or, in Barry's case, allegedly using steroids). They still had to work for it. Over the years, we have learned many things about the body and how to optimize its performance. Today's athletes do a lot of things to prepare themselves that were unheard of 30, 40, 50 years ago. Baseball players, for example, never used to lift weights. They had some superstition about how it would rob them of much needed flexibility. Now, damn near all of them lift weights, and obviously it enhances their performance. So where do we draw the line? How strictly do we want athletes to adhere to the way things have always been done? Is a record only valid if the player lived Babe Ruth's lifestyle? Do we need one record book for guys who eat hot dogs and drink beer and another for those who lift weights and eat vegetables?
Another thing that drives me up a wall is this reference to the Steroids Era. For God's sakes, these guys did not invent the practice of taking a drug to help them play better. Several superstars from the '50s and '60s have admitted to taking amphetamines to give them a boost during the dog days of the long baseball season. It seems very likely that at least one or two home runs each year cleared the fence because the guy with the bat in his hands had just given himself a little boost. So for what exactly are we penalizing the players of the Steroids Era? Taking better drugs?
The debate about steroids is filled with hypocrisy, hysteria and self-righteousness. It's stupid to take steroids. But from what I can see, taking issue with the achievements of the athletes who took them is just as dumb.
3 comments:
So you thing taking steroids id ok?what do you think will happen in 10-20 years all them kids will start taking roids and 20 years later they`ll be all wrecks.I hate roids I just hate it whe in high school for example I would work my butt off and there were them 2-3 years old yonger guys that were benching or squating twice as much as i did.It's even mentaly hard to keep workig as you see the effect of the others work compared to yours.
Hey there, Ivan. Actually, I don't think using steroids is OK. As I said in the first paragraph, I think they are incredibly harmful and should be banned. Later, I called using steroids "stupid." I just think we're over-reacting when we attack those athletes who have taken them. I imagine that when you were in high school, if there were a safe and legal supplement you could have taken to enhance your performance, you would've taken it. And you may very well have taken those that were available to you at the time--creatine, protein powder, whatever. And when you're seeing the results steroids using are getting, instead of being frustrated or envious, just remember, in 20 or 30 years, they could be facing all kinds of physical consequences. You won't. You made the right choice.
OK but if we are not over-reacting then more and more of them yong kids will think taking steroids is not that bad and we`ll probably pretty soon have a generation of athletes that are all absoliute monsters for 10-15 years and they`ll probably all start daying at like 40.I`m not from the States but I went there for my senior high-school-year and I can tell you that from my point of veiw your nation, as a whole have a major problem with steroids and I don`t really thing there is such a thing as over-reacting when you are talking about steroids.You can`t really over-react or do too much to prevent the self-destruction of the american athletes (and the athletes as a whole).
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