Male Adolescent Anabolic Steroid Use:.
Wherever you look these days, you cannot help but notice all of the focus placed on sex appeal in advertisements to sell most products ranging from colognes to floor cleaners. It is anywhere and everywhere, which makes being a teenage boy that much more difficult. While he is growing and maturing, his head is filled with images of these "beefcake" guys with huge biceps, enormous chests, and perfect abs. The media portrays these "guys" as having it all. They have all the girls, they are happy, and they are respected by every other guy (Deacon, 52-53). What young male does not want this? The answer is most of them do! Young males are "brainwashed" so severely that they will do anything to obtain this "cut" and "ripped" look. A surprising amount will go so far as to inject themselves with anabolic steroids to achieve this look as quickly as possible. A young guy will start taking "roids" without having any prior knowledge of what the psychological and physiological affects of this hormonal drug are. On the other hand, if they are knowledgeable of the affects they just tend to overlook them and take the "nothing can hurt me, I"m young and invincible" attitude (Kusserow, 13). What most young males do not understand is that once they take steroids for the first time, they are doing an incredible amount of irreversible damage to their bodies and their minds. They might only stay on them until they get to a certain size and they are happy with the results and then stop taking them. Once they halt usage, they "shrink" quite rapidly and immediately feel the need to take the steroids again (Deacon, 53). This cycles over and over until it becomes an addiction. Most guys still continue to take them, keep lifting, and keep getting "huge" until something goes wrong down the road. Usually it happens to be an injury to the body caused by the steroid use. Once this cycle has gone on for a while, it is that much harder to just stop taking the drug (Deacon, 52).
