Sizing Up

The cold country air doesn’t ever stop 29-year old Casey from working out. In his home town in regional Victoria, going to the gym is as much a part of his life as anything else.

A few years ago he got sick with pneumonia. After a visit to the doctor he discovered he had low testosterone with levels the same as a 60-year-old.

After briefly trying steroids in his early twenties, he decided to take matters into his own hands and buy testosterone on the black market, rather than wait for a specialist’s advice. Immediately his mood and energy levels changed.

Casey then decided to experiment with other compounds and began seriously researching anabolic steroids through online forums and Facebook pages. He also spoke to other users at the gym and found a YouTube channel which he says showed him how to use safely.

Having suffered from depression, Casey says his mood stabilised while taking the steroids and he was less anxious. His training and recovery also improved dramatically and he was able to train harder and for longer.

“You’re going to repair a lot faster so if you were to recover over three days you could probably recover over two days or even one day depending on how much you are using and what anabolics you are on,” he says.

A competitive bodybuilder, Casey says he wouldn’t be able to compete in his untested federation if he wasn’t using anabolic steroids.

“If you go in there not on them you’re not even going to get looked at so it’s the sort of thing you have to do,” he says.

It’s not only body builders and people competing in professional events who use anabolic steroids. Increasingly its gym goers like *Brian.

The 24-year-old university student spent two years researching steroid use online before he took his first anabolic steroid. He says he takes them purely for aesthetic reasons.

"I had a friend who had started anabolic steroids and had told me about it and I was quite apprehensive of it [but] as my goals had shifted over time I was seeing progression in the gym and I was like….I want to be at a level further than what is possible now.”

*Brian now does what’s called ‘blasting’ and ‘cruising’ - a process which involves taking large doses of steroids for a period of time and then reducing the doses for the same amount of time, before increasing them again. He says he does this to allow his body to recover and his hormone levels to return to normal.

However, *Brian does suffer from side effects including testicle shrinkage and some loss of sexual function.

“The moment you take endogenous testosterone your testes will shrink down, they're not producing their own endogenous testosterone so there's no need for them to be full size,” he says.

*Brian has his bloods checked regularly by a doctor because he says he's worried about high blood pressure, liver and kidney damage and the possible effects on his heart. Fertility is another area that can also be impacted by steroid use.

“To be honest for me, at this point in my life that's more of a benefit than a downside,” he says.

Endocrinologist, Professor Ann Conway, says along with these side effects, users can also get what’s called ‘roid rage’.

“Its known that high doses of steroids in some men can induce aggressive behaviour and there was a study where five per cent of them had manic type behaviour,” she says.

She believes no dose of testosterone or anabolic steroids is safe when not prescribed by a doctor.

Not long after his first cycle of anabolic steroids, Casey ran into trouble. He was buying steroids from another bodybuilder and it was a bad batch.

“Where I injected it turned into an abscess and I couldn’t walk,” he says. He went to the doctor who he says gave him a lecture about taking steroids.

Dr Beng Eu is a GP in Melbourne and sees several steroid users a week. He thinks the harsh reaction from some doctors is driving users further underground.

However Professor Conway thinks doctors should be giving the same advice to steroid users as they do smokers.

“My advice is that they should come off. They may be doing themselves long term harm and they should stop. As doctors we don't advise people who are smoking or using illegal drugs that…it's okay to continue using them,” she says.

Fueling the use of anabolic steroids in Australia is how easy it is to buy them on the black market. You can order a range of substances online and within a few days they’ll arrive in the post.

“They delivered something recently and it was rubber banded to the front door in plain view of everyone in the street. Inside were 10 vials and caps of Dbol,” *Brian says of a recent batch he bought.

Queensland and NSW have the toughest steroid laws in the country. In 2014 the states moved steroids into Schedule 1 which means they are classed alongside illicit drugs such as heroin, cocaine and amphetamines. In Queensland the maximum penalty for possession is 25 years in prison.

“What drives that is that they're trying to get the people who are effectively traffickers, professional suppliers of these drugs to stop,” says Bill Potts from the Queensland Law Society.

Users like Casey and Brian say the laws are too harsh and believe steroids are a different and less dangerous drug.

“It doesn’t match the reality of the situation” says Brian.

Neither plan to stop using in the near future.

*Brian's name has been changed.