When athletes take steroids and other forms of PED, they have a negative effect on their long-term health. The athletes are hurting themselves in the long run while using PED. They are not even improving their short-term rewards that they achieve to gain by using these drugs. If the competitors are using PED along with them, then both sides are hurting themselves and not gaining any advantage. This is basically the same as competition against each other without using drugs; meaning they are hurting themselves for no reason at all. Steroids have many negative side effects such as balding in women and men, deep voice and facial hair in women, breast enlargement in men and breast reduction in women, kidney disease and retention of fluids (steroids bloat), reduced testicular size, reduced sperm count, erectile dysfunction, hostility, aggression, delusions and hallucinations, severe acne, high blood cholesterol, atherosclerosis, liver dysfunction and cancer, increased size in ovaries, end ovulation and menstruation and depression upon withdrawal. This is the main set of reasons for banning PED and other forms of drugs from athletic competitions (Becker) (Digital Image).
Athletes take these drugs to seek an unfair advantage over the opposing athlete. They do not take them to level the playing field. Suppose the opposing athlete is taking them too, then the athlete might take 20, 30 or 40 grams rather than the regular 10 grams to try defeating the opponent. This violent circle just gets bigger and bigger. The game in the end will be an activity, which is increasingly extreme, violent and meaningless, practiced by athletes or a class of chemical genetic mutant gladiators. Should they even be called athletes anymore? They perform more like mutants than athletes. The use of PED is not fortuitous, it is a planned and done intentionally with the goal to get an unfair advantage (Pound).
When fully trained, elite athletes use PED, they can improve the performance drastically compared to any other combination of the most sophisticated, intensive, and costly non-pharmaceutical ideas that are known to modern sports science.
