Myth and mythology about anabolic steroid use

It seems like every day another stupid person is born – and somewhere in the delivery room, they’re given a computer with Internet access, and forced to engage in online discussions about anabolic steroids. I’m guessing that this is the reason behind many of the steroid myths I see repeated all day on the Internet. I’m not entirely sure where many of these myths come from, although they seem well intentioned and mostly well-meaning, they also seem to be very self-serving, in the case of steroid users who are espousing the nobility of their lifestyle.

In the spirit of education, I’d like to go over a half dozen of the more egregious errors I’ve read about anabolic steroids, and give it my best to correct them:

Myth #1. Steroids don’t burn fat

Of course they do. In nearly every study ever conducted, steroids have been shown to reduce body fat. Usually the person making this absurd claim is actually attempting to make an obtuse point about the importance of diet, or discipline, or some other noble aspect of fat loss. Still, it’s total bullsh*t. Steroids burn fat, they’ve done it in nearly every medical study ever conducted, and while I’m not poo-pooing the importance of diet, I would love to put this stupid myth to bed. Steroids burn fat. Deal with it.

If you’ve ever responded “diet” when someone asked you what the best fat-burning steroid was, you should jump off a f*cking bridge, you f*cking moron.

Myth #2. Steroids don’t work unless you train

Utter bullsh*t. Many studies have been conducted on elderly people, people recovering from burns, and even healthy people, all of whom were not working out, and (*given proper dosing) these people gain muscle and strength without training. Every study ever conducted on Testosterone Replacement Therapy and andropause has displayed an increase in muscle and strength, regardless of training or not training. Again, this is an oft-repeated myth, typically espoused by steroid users who don’t want people to think using anabolic steroids are the “easy way out.” In fact, they do allow you to train harder and longer, and still recover and make gains – but if you give them to someone who doesn’t train, they’ll still gain some muscle and strength, albeit not as much as when they’re combined with proper training and diet.

Myth #3 . Higher don’t necessarily give more results

Really? Most medical studies say otherwise. Anabolic steroids follow a linear dose response curve, meaning the more you take, the more size and strength you gain (to a point). All things being equal, with consistent training and diet, using a higher dose of anabolic steroids will produce more size and strength. Again, this is a well meaning myth, usually vomited out onto the internet by people who want to curtail the massive doses we’re seeing in beginner steroid cycles. But the truth is that you will likely gain more muscle, and more strength, with higher doses. The physiques seen in professional bodybuilding were, by and large, built with massive doses of anabolic steroids. If you even think about mentioning Lee Priest at this point, I hate you.

Myth #4. Steroids don’t work unless you eat enough

Actually, during periods of caloric deprivation, the body upregulates the androgen receptors and increases the effectiveness of anabolic steroids. Steroids increase nitrogen (protein) retention, so while you may have previously been on a hypocaloric diet, adding anabolic steroids to a period of dieting will make protein turnover more efficient, so that (previously hypocaloric) amount of calories may be(come) enough to gain muscle. Again, we’d all like to take the moral high ground here and say that anabolic steroids won’t work if you don’t eat enough, and point to the massive caloric intakes of professional bodybuilders like Jay Cutler, whose off-season McDiet inflates him to Hindinbergian dimensions, but the truth is that even if you don’t change your diet at all, you’ll put on muscle with anabolic steroids.

Myth #5. If you can’t accomplish your goals without drugs, you can’t do it with them

This is a bunch of crap typically regurgitated by natural athletes, particularly bodybuilders. If winning a natural bodybuilding contest is your goal, then yeah, you’re fine without using anabolic steroids. Most natural bodybuilders, even the best professional ones in the world, would be blown off the stage here in New Jersey, at the amateur state championships. While I’m at it, let me say that being a “professional” natural bodybuilder is the stupidest thing in the world. You win one contest, and bang, you get your pro card. Contrast that with becoming a professional bodybuilder in the IFBB, where you have to work your way from a local show, to a regional or state show, and then win a national contest (and if you’re a chick,  maybe sleep with a judge or two, or sign a contract with the head judges son to manage you).

In truth, natural bodybuilding, and for that matter “natural” athletics is a myth. There is nothing natural about ingesting 20 grams of creatine per day, when you’d need to eat 20 stakes to get it from food, or taking ten grams of vitamin C, which would be equivalent to about a thousand oranges. And, before I forget, Androstenedione was considered “natural” in 2000, and now in 2009, it’s considered a steroid. AT BEST, natural athletics is an amorphous and nebulous set of ad hoc definitions that in almost no way relate to the idea of “natural,” by any standard definition.

Myth #6.  You may never completely recover your natural hormone production if you do anabolic steroids (alternately: this myth can be said “You CAN completely recover….etc…).

Here’s the truth: When you do a six month cycle, you get six months older. If your testosterone naturally gets lower from the age of 18 (or 25, or whatever), you’ll have less (naturally) in six months, whether you did the cycle or not. You won’t get back to exactly where you started, for the most part, because you get older with each cycle. If you stay on a cycle for three years, starting at age 25, you’ll have less testosterone at the age of 28. When you try to recover your “natural” level, you need to realize that it would now be lower, regardless of what you did. Steroids can lower your natural testosterone more than it may have gone, but the thing we need to remember is that cycles don’t occur in a vacuum, they take time, and we get older. If you get your testosterone checked once a year, it will keep going down as you get older, cycle or not.

It’s just plain stupid to say you can (or can not) get back to your natural (pre-cycle) levels, because it fails to take into account the natural decline of testosterone. The primary thing to remember is that you can, 99% of the time, restore endocrine function to levels that fall within a normal range, after a cycle. Reams of medical and anecdotal data have supported this point for decades, and the commonly repeated myth about “natural levels” is simply inconsistent with reality.

Now, granted, I think most of the myths and mythology I read about anabolic steroids are mostly well meaning and are repeated with good intentions. They stress discipline and hard work, and that’s a positive thing. Anabolic steroids work far better when you do everything right, eat correctly,  and bust your ass training. But the idea that they can’t work unless you do everything right is incorrect. They’ll pretty much work regardless of how stupid you are or how lame your training and diet is. That’s where the differences come in, and that’s where the successful cycles distance themselves from the mediocre ones.

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