Medicinal Steroids?

I have ambivalent feelings about T-Nation. In my collection of downloaded articles off their web site, I find some very informative and helpful articles. Still, it’s a shame that they take this wonderful information that they harvest and use it as part of their embrace of the excesses of the bodybuilding world.

Actually, you could say this about the bodybuilding in general. If you look into the history of bodybuilding, you can see an early desire to elevate the human body to the level of importance that the human mind gets. When you read some of the early pioneers of the fitness world, such as Swoboda, Jowett, and Lalanne, these men were all as intelligent as they were powerful. Clearly they were onto something: That a human was better off when both the mind and the body were given equal stimulus and importance.

Somewhere along the line though, the wonderful effects of this balance was sacrificed. Desire took over and needs were neglected.

Such as the article that showed up several years ago on T-Nation. The article ridiculed the media’s depiction of steroids as an evil drug when anabolic steroids have some wonderful medical uses. I agree. Many diseases result in the same problem: degeneration of human tissue. Anything that can reverse that has obvious benefits when battling a disease.

This all has the air of the managing editor of High Times Magazine would have lobbying for the legalization of marijuana for medicinal uses. This isn’t coming from a concerned doctor. It’s coming from a bodybuilder. He’s obviously interested in removing the stigma from steroids for his personal gain.

Frankly, people like TC are really the ones to blame for the stigma, paranoia, and witch hunt that steroid use has descended to. Yes, steroids do have some legitimate medical use. Still, bodybuilders were all to eager to grab massive loads of steroids in any way possible in order to register some massive muscle gains. TC decries the negative side effects of steroids that make the news headlines. If it wasn’t for bodybuilders, we wouldn’t know that men could grow tits and shrink their testicles from heavy steroid use. We wouldn’t know that women would grow chest hair, lose it on their heads, and grow their clitoris’ into small penis’. We wouldn’t be fixating on the cancer, ‘roid rages (if you chose to believe that they don’t exist), and heart problems that heavy steroid use causes.

Ultimately, your head-first rush into excess is what brought this on. Your desire to continue doing so will keep these medicines in a state of taboo. Your lack of desire to lead a balanced, healthy life and to be an example of health and fitness has hurt the chances of using steroids to some great benefit. What you have done is similar to Prometheus becoming a pyromaniac.