Download File - David Ruggles

Steroids in Sports
By: David Ruggles
Steroids are types of drugs used to treat medical conditions and can be helpful. Anabolic
steroids are drugs that replicate human sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen, which are
taken illegally and often abused to alter one’s physical appearance. Often times, drug abusers of
steroids take 10 to 100 times more than would be prescribed by a physician to treat a condition or
illness. Steroids can be used to become stronger and due to the boost in testosterone it can
increase muscle mass. For this very reason it has been adopted into the world of sports and
competition. Barry Bonds, a former baseball player for the San Francisco giants, was caught
using steroids that ultimately helped him break the home run record. Think about this for a
second. With Barry Bonds you expect the league will find him guilty of performance-enhancing
drug use and suspend him. Who benefits from that outcome? Clean players who were in
competition with Bonds, certainly, and all fans who want the game free of cheating for good no
matter how unrealistic that seems. Baseball teams are businesses, understandably motivated by
winning and profits more than morality. So what’s to stop a club from looking the other way or
even stealthily encouraging a player to use steroids? Some believe that the primary reason why
performance enhancing drugs are outlawed in professional sports is that they give users an unfair
advantage over the rest of the field. Various professional sports leagues have attempted to set a
level playing field by testing for drug use and suspending those found guilty. It’s a noble effort,
but it’s clearly not working. Stiff punishments have done little to reduce the number of cyclists
caught cheating every year. Major League Baseball also gives hands down suspensions each
season to players caught using outlawed substances, and it’s absurd to think that those players
are the only ones guilty of juicing.
I will argue that this is wrong and that using PEDs is cheating and should be against the
rules. It is not fair to the athlete who worked hard to get to where he is when his opponent got
there as easy as the press of a syringe. Games can be determined by a matter of fractions of a
second and if one of the contestants has an edge over the others that time counts in his favor.
Steroids are not all bad, they are used in medicine to help growth and fight some serious
diseases. Steroids have positive effects they can increase muscle mass by increasing nitrogen
levels in the body which in turn produces proteins that help in the production of muscles.
Reduced body fat steroids speed up the metabolism of the body, which helps in reducing the fat.
Increased effectiveness of training if you take steroids, the effects of your physical training
would be much more instant. Steroids also improve recovery rate by producing cortisol, which
helps the body handle stress and also speeds up the recovery time. It started out as a treatment for
diseases as all drugs do and people saw an opportunity that if these drugs could improve the
physical condition in people suffering from muscle deficiency and things like that why couldn’t
it work for professional athletes? Once people started using steroids all athletes were on steroids.
Eliot Marshall stated “Gradually the word spread that anabolic steroids were good for any sport
that required strength. They were taken up by football players, shot-putters, discus throwers, and
even by swimmers and sprinters.”(1) Steroids improve and athlete’s performance, strength and
stamina which make it the perfect drug for a struggling baseball player or a no-name football
player. Although steroids can be beneficial in small doses, to those who need them, when the
dose is increased it becomes harmful. Athletes need more so that they can become the best and
each time they juice they need a bigger dose so that they can keep improving their bodies and
strength. These drugs that athletes use to enhance their performance are not obtained legally, if
they were legal they would not be in such high doses, they are usually bought from a friend or a
fellow team mate and sometimes even a coach. Although steroids can be good and have a
positive effect in treating many known diseases, when they are used for an athletic advantage
they are illegal and unfair.
When steroids are used in high doses there are just as many negative effects as there are
positive. Some people don’t know all of the side effects of anabolic steroids while they are
taking them but some do know and they still choose to take them. Steroids affect the body by
increasing the amount of testosterone which is a male hormone. The testosterone causes an
increase muscle mass and builds recovery time but too much of it can cause a lot of problems for
the user. Side effects of a reoccurring high dose of steroids are breasts development, testicle
shrinkage, decreased sperm count, infertility, and impotency. The use of steroids by athletes is an
abuse of the drug and is irresponsible. Not only are steroids dangerous to use because of the
physical side effects, like weakening the heart, but steroids can also affect you psychologically.
The increased testosterone causes massive mood swings that are often violent and unpredictable
due to all of the unnatural hormones. Violent mood swings caused by steroids are referred to as
roid rage where the user is easily aggravated and often results in violence. Due to unstable
moods the user takes more steroids to compensate and uses steroids to feel less self-conscious.
When steroids are taken the chemicals in the brain are unbalanced on account of all the extra
hormones and this can cause feeling of inadequacy and even depression that ultimately can lead
to suicidal thoughts. Steroids become a psychological need and a sort of comfort for the user.
Steroids are dangerous because they are both physically and psychologically addicting.
Steroids can take a toll on your body but they have already taken a huge toll on the
beloved American sports that have been affected by the use of steroids in their competitions. A
study was done on retired NFL players who recently left the game. These players were
interviewed and asked if they had ever juiced before to have an edge for an upcoming game. 1 in
10 of these retired athletes admitted to using steroids to give them the boost that they needed.
That is also not accounting for the players currently in the NFL now and certainly doesn’t stand
for the players of other professional sports. The sport to see the most steroid use is the all
American sport of baseball. Players are suspended every season more than any other sport and
the problem is getting worse. People are starting to find new ways to juice that get past the blood
and urine tests that they run just so they can perform better on the field. Where did the talent go?
Athletes are role models for little kids and how does it look if they got where they are today due
to and artificial supplements. Part of the reason that sports are so entertaining is that people
enjoy the fact that it is 2 teams who work hard and they show what they deserve out on the field,
it is based on talent and strength, but what if that strength is augmented through a needle?
Thomas H. Murray, a writer at the Hastings Center, argued “When it comes to performanceenhancing drugs, gene doping, and the panoply of manipulations banned widely in sports, the
challenge is less about fairness than about meaning. If the rules ban performance-enhancing
drugs, then using those drugs to gain an advantage over athletes who refuse to cheat is unfair.”(5)
He followed up with this, “Part of the answer to this challenge is to recognize that sports are
about what can be accomplished under specific limitations” Winners and losers may be the
difference in a couple yards and if one player is juicing and the opposing player is not, the
competition is not fair. Steroids could decide the winner and loser whether it is a millisecond
between first and second in a race or a homerun hit over the left field wall. When some athletes
use steroids, all athletes feel the pressure to use them. The spread of steroid use has led to the
loss of interest in some of the fans who would rather watch a fair game of teams they don’t like
rather than watch their favorite one cheat. Baseball has lost a lot of its initial fans due to steroid
use and scandals. It is a disgrace to wear your team colors and act as if you have been practicing
as hard and putting in the time the other players on the field are. Players who take steroids do not
deserve to play with the athletes who put in effort and have talent.
There is a reason that steroids are illegal in high doses and you can be suspended from
professional sports if caught juicing. It is because it is damaging to your body, your team, and the
sport as a whole. Steroids should be used for medical treatments only and anyone caught using
them for sports should be heavily fined. Steroids and other PED’s have destroyed many careers
and sports team’s reputations. Sports were meant to be based on talent and training, not artificial
strength and agility. Steroids should stay illegal and extra precautions should be taken to keep
them out of professional sports for good.