Explain the patterns of Anabolic Steroid Abuse. Include the slang terminology associated with illegal use, complications a user may encounter, and side effects
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: Some anabolic steroids can be taken orally and others through intramuscular injections, but abusers often administer a combination of both types in a practice called stacking. Hard-core abusers may take a combination of three to five different pills and injectables simultaneously,
or they may consume any steroid that is available ("shotgunning"), with the total exceeding a
dozen.
Multiple injections into the buttocks or thighs, with 1.5-inch needles (called "darts" or "points"), are painful and inevitably leave scars. If these needles are shared, as they frequently are, the risk of hepatitis or HIV contamination is significant.
Steroid abusers often engage in a practice called cycling, in which steroids are taken for periods lasting from four to eighteen weeks, the "on" periods being separated by "off" periods of abstinence. Unfortunately, when the drugs are withdrawn, the newly developed muscles tend to "shrink up," throwing the abuser into a panic that his or her body is losing the gains that have
been achieved. In addition, abstinence from steroids can lead to signs of depression, sleep problems, lack of appetite, and general moodiness.
All these effects encourage a return to steroids, frequently in even larger doses, and generate a craving for the euphoria that the person felt while taking them. A variation of the cycling pattern is the practice of pyramiding. An individual starts with low doses of steroids, gradually increases the doses over several weeks prior to an athletic competition, and then tapers off entirely before the competition itself in an attempt to escape detection during drug testing. However, pyramiding
leads to the same problems during withdrawal and abstinence as cycling, except that the symptoms occur during the competition itself.
A major problem associated with steroid abuse is the potential for an individual to believe that his or her physique will forever be imperfect. In a kind of "reverse anorexia" that has been called muscle dysmorphia, some body builders continue to see their bodies as weak and small when they look at themselves in the mirror despite their greatly enhanced physical development.
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