The True Story of Steroid Destruction
Many people in the public know the positive and negative effects steroids can cause to a person, but if you ask them if how they found out about it, a huge response would be the news. People don’t want to find out about something unless it affects them directly. Take AIDS for an example. Not a person in the United States in America wanted to know about AIDS until someone famous was diagnosed with the disease. When we found out about someone of that stature getting a disease everyone wants to know all about it because we as a nation are ignorant to the fact of the ways of obtaining it. I guess we all thought that it couldn’t happen to the upper echelon people of the world. The old outlook on AIDS was that only homosexuals and impoverished people had AIDS.
Now we are all educated and know that it can and will happen to everyone. This is the same outlook people have with steroids. Steroids have been used for decades and no one has even batted an eye over the effects it has on the body or some of the emotional damage it may cause. There have been only a handful of articles and books written over the years of the dangers of steroids and now you have an entire section that it dedicated to the pros and cons of the drug. When all of the body builders of the world we getting beyond huge no one questioned how they did it, they just looked at the sport in awe of how gigantic these humans were becoming. The world didn’t care how they did it or why they did it; they just wanted to see just how big a human could possibly get by any means necessary. This is evident because they didn’t even have drug-testing policies for an extended amount of time from when the bodybuilding competitions began. Now the sport has seen how much damage the drug does and there are numerous testing throughout the competition season.
The exact scenario has happened with baseball. Over the past ten years mighty records of homeruns in a season, games consecutively played and along with countless personal bests by these athletes have all be crush with new mind boggling standards. And how; Extra practice, illegal equipment, personal trainers? Well the answer has become surprisingly evident! STEROIDS!! Now baseball has placed a penalty on everyone who uses or even gets caught with any illegal supplement. Everyone now knows the pros and cons of steroids, but we still chose to use them for that “extra advantage” and in the following case it lead to death.
In the January 2006 edition of Scholastic magazine there was a heartbreaking article about a child who wanted to be the best baseball player possible, but due to the emotional roller coaster that steroids put him on, he took his own life at the age of 17. Taylor Hooten was like every other high school athlete; he wanted to be the best. He worked out with the team but didn’t see the muscle results that he was after so he asked around about how to get bigger and he got his answer. The answer to all of his body problems was simple: Steroids. He began taking steroids and saw his body weight go from 175 pounds to 205 pounds and he strength go off the charts in a small amount of time.
Everyone around Taylor Hooten was very impressed at how he worked so hard and how far he had come. No one really knew how except himself. Other than noticing how big and strong their son had gotten, the parents noticed behavior problems with Taylor. He was usually a mild mannered young man, but recently he had become very violent and loud. He would sometimes lash out in heated tirades and then apologize shortly after. His parents then realized something was wrong. After Taylor realized that the steroids were his problem he quickly got rid of all of his drugs and tried to clean himself up, but it was too late. Not having the drugs in his system caused his body to turn against him, which threw him into terrible mood swings and a horrible case of depression. The depression was so bad that he finally couldn’t stand the pain and took his life. After the family found out that their child was addicted to steroids they launched a foundation in his name that helps research and help trouble kids who are also having a steroid problem.
This is a true story that actually got publish and there could be many more that went without noticed because the right people were unaware of the problem. Now Professional Teams, College Teams, High Schools and some Recreational Teams are testing for drugs and illegal supplement use. Now the right people know the symptoms of abuse and the remedies to help these athletes have a way out. It might be too late for the ones who have fallen victim, but the lives and careers of the people who can be saved are far too important to sweep this problem under the rug. People now know that one quick fix might turn into a lifelong problem or sudden death.