posted April 04, 2000 08:40 PM            

"Mr. Natural" is a pen name for a well-known bodybuilding journalist. He's known for his anti-steroid stance, and he's gotten on quite a few soapboxes in the past to rail against bodybuilding drugs. However, he fell from grace. He eventually succumbed to the lure of steroids.

He doesn't want to reveal his name just yet because of how it might affect him professionally. Somehow, though, this "confession" has made him feel better. This is his story.

I was never, ever going to use steroids. Period. End of story. I was proud to be natural, and determined to take my body to the point where it was the biggest and strongest it could possibly be�without drugs. But the call of the Dark Side is powerful, and eventually its gnawing invitations can sway even the strongest of us. That's what happened to me.

I'm not Skip LaCour or Mike O'Hearn, one of the "A" list natural bodybuilders who you all know. I'm known more as a writer for the bodybuilding magazines than for my titles. I was first published in 1992, and the focus of much of my earlier writing was training and nutrition for the natural athlete, plus many anti-steroid articles. Still, my physique has been good enough to earn photo shoots that have landed my image in Ironman, Muscle Media 2000, Muscular Development, Musclemag International, and Natural Physique.

I moved out to California in January of 1991 from the East Coast, and was soon totally immersed in the L.A. bodybuilding subculture. I was 21 years old, still finishing up my last year of college, and had been training one way or another since I was fifteen. Until that point, I had competed in three ANBC natural shows in New England, placing only once.

I was a bodybuilder wannabe, with a growing collection of baggy pants, boatneck tops, supplements, and physique magazines. Just a week after driving cross-country to what would become my new home, I joined Gold's Gym in Venice to train with a friend from my hometown that had moved to L.A. four years earlier. Talk about being a kid in a candy store! I went from dabbling wannabe to obsessed, hardcore bodybuilder in no time via the influence of seeing men like Gary Strydom, Flex Wheeler, Jim and Mike Quinn, Mike Matarazzo, and countless other freaks of nature daily. It was a 65-mile round trip to train at Gold's, but I never even questioned the inconvenience.

Soon, all I could think or talk about was my next workout or meal, the latest wonder supplement, my routines, measurements, exercise poundages, and who was the strongest contender for the Mr. Olympia or Nationals title. Making matters worse, my job was in the bodybuilding media, effectively blanketing me in the cult world of bodybuilding every waking second.

Yet, obsessed as I was, I was never tempted to try steroids. Primarily, I was afraid of needles, and even more mortified of the horrible (maybe even fatal!) effects of the drugs. I had lost my father, uncle, and two aunts to cancer in the previous few years, and had reason to believe that I was at a greater risk than the average person of getting the big C. Of course, I envied the awesome enhanced physiques of all the big guys, like Shawn Ray, Kevin Levrone, Paul DeMayo, and hundreds of other pros and amateurs who I saw. But I had more or less resolved to myself that I would never know the feeling of having twenty-inch arms, massive, round muscles, weighing 250 pounds, and generally being so goddamn big that everyone, everywhere you went, couldn't help but stare slack-jawed at the freakish spectacle of overdeveloped muscle.

I would always be part of their world, though never really being "one of the guys" who could rap about buying drugs, using drugs, selling drugs, or rating drugs�all favorite subjects of discussion among drug-using bodybuilders. Natural guys were like second-class citizens in the world of bodybuilding, tolerated, but not accepted into the elite inner circle.

I had other reasons for not using drugs. I had quickly built up a reputation, mostly through my writing, as a natural bodybuilder vehemently against the use of steroids. In one article, I actually wrote that I would sooner stick a needle in my eye than use steroids. I was terrified of looking like a hypocrite if I betrayed my own stated beliefs. Finally, I was starting to do better in contests, taking second and third places and narrowing the gap between my physique and those that were beating me. I knew that, although I wasn't genetically gifted enough to win a national-level natural contest like Team Universe or Musclemania, it was feasible that soon I would start winning local or state-level shows. My gains had been continuous. By mid-'92, I was up to an off-season weight of 230 pounds at 5'8", admittedly with quite a bit of flab. But I still thought my best days were ahead of me, that I hadn't yet hit my potential. I decided to make 1995 my big year to win a natural contest.

I did three contests in '95, taking second as a light-heavyweight twice, and winning the heavyweight class at a rinky-dink show with only two other guys in the class. The third and final contest was what convinced me that I might as well try drugs. It was an NPC-sanctioned natural contest, and I arrived in the shape of my life. Though I weighed in at only 181 pounds, I had been dieting for over six months and was lean enough to have striated glutes. I lost the light-heavyweight class to a guy that was 5'6" and 185 pounds, whose younger brother has come damn close to winning his pro card several times, and who used drugs for many years before cleaning out after the 1993 USA. I was in superior condition, but he kicked my ass on shape and thickness. He went on the win the Overall title.

By late summer of 1996, about a month before I turned 27, I made the decision to try a cycle. I knew my wife wouldn't be very happy about this, so I didn't tell her. Although I knew a couple local dealers at my gym, I sure as hell didn't want them blabbing to everybody that Mr. Natural was changing his colors. I found a German guy who supplied a well-known and many-titled local pro, and decided this was the best way to get reliable drugs discreetly.

I went to the man's place of business one muggy August night and made the transaction in his back room. Walking out, I felt a strange exhilaration. Soon I would be growing huge, breaking past the limits of my own body's natural abilities. Vivid images of a bigger me filled my head and sent adrenaline rushing through my veins. There was shame and sadness as well, but I buried those emotions underneath the thrilling anticipation of what was to come. The next day, I left work early to visit a friend's house for my first two injections: one ampoule of Testoviron Depot, and one Deca-Durabolin from Greece. The injections hurt, but what hurt more was knowing I had just passed the point of no return. Never again could I make the proud claim of being natural for life, a status I was so proud of that I actually owned a couple shirts that proclaimed it.

It took me another day to tell my wife, and she went ballistic. For the first time in the five years we had been married, she actually left and didn't return until midnight, buying wine coolers and drinking by herself in a dark car, mulling over what her jackass husband had done. I talked her down in stages, explaining that this was to be a one-time thing, that injectables were much safer than pills, and that I wasn't spending a lot of money. Soon, I had her agreeing to do the injections for me. If I had been able to do them myself, I never would have told her, but plunging a 22-gauge syringe deep into my glute was something I couldn't handle. We had our share of injection mishaps, dropping amps and spilling oil, painfully hitting nerves or blood vessels that would bleed freely, and once even having a loaded needle explode, spraying her eyes with oily steroids that blurred her vision in one eye for an hour.

After a month into the first cycle, my results were somewhat disappointing. To be exact, there were no results. Not a pound of weight gained, not even so much as a single zit. After two weeks, I had suspected the drugs might be fake, but now I was sure.

In a case of poetic justice, the German dealer was busted soon after and was caught with real Winstrol. Apparently he had real stuff for the pros, and fake crap he unloaded on schmucks like me.

My wife got philosophical about the bad turn of events. "Maybe you getting ripped off is God's way of telling you to forget it," she offered. I do believe in God, but I didn't believe He was trying to steer me away from steroids. Instead, I decided it was time for me to take matters into my own hands. It was time to head south of the border.

It was late November of 1996 when I first went to Tijuana to buy steroids. I went with my wife, my 2-year-old daughter, and my mother-in-law visiting from the East Coast. It was the first of three trips I eventually made. After trying five or six "farmacias" where the mention of steroids elicited curt denials and brusque dismissals, I found a place that actually set a big laminated steroid "menu" up on the counter. That first time, I bought 10 Sustanon 250 pre-loaded syringes and a 50-ml bottle of Norandren, a veterinary version of Deca.

I snuck the Sustanons out in my socks, the Norandren in my cooler. My mother-in-law read the label and pronounced with disbelief, "This drug is for a damned horse!" There was one scary moment crossing back over the border (I hung back about thirty people from my family) when I saw the Customs guy reach into the cooler. He came up with an orange and threw it away. I nearly had a heart attack. Minutes later, I was waved through, heart thumping like a jackhammer, socks stuffed with Sustanon. I had real drugs, no doubt, and now the experiment could truly begin.

Thanks to my smuggling adventure, I finally had some genuine steroids, and eagerly took my first injection the very night we drove back from Tijuana. At long last, results started to come. My weight went from a soft 212 pounds to a hard and full 220 pounds after about six weeks. It doesn't sound dramatic in terms of weight gain, but I was far leaner and more vascular. The big difference was really noticeable during training. The pumps were like nothing I had ever known: full-blown, skin-busting pumps that seemingly made me double in size for the 90 minutes I kept feeding them with ever-increasing loads of iron. Finally, I was getting a taste of how it feels to be a freak. Of course, I could surmise that the guys and gals at the gym were quite suspicious. The telltale boil-like acne on my back and shoulders was getting worse by the week.

And to further add to the case for steroid use, my strength had gone through the stratosphere. I had always been strong for my size, but here's how some exercises progressed:

Squats: From 495 for 5 to 725 for 5
Overhead Dumbbell Presses: From 120 for 6 to 140 for 8
Hammer Dip Machine: From 495 for 5 to 585 for 6
Pulldowns, Narrow Grip: From 300 for 6 to 390 for 6

Apparently, I was more suited to be a strong man than a big man was, as subsequent cycles yielded only fractions more muscle (my top weight was 224), yet I just kept getting stronger. My second "real" cycle was two Sustanons a week for ten weeks, plus 300 mg of Laurabolin 50, another veterinary Deca.

I decided to do a contest after my third real cycle. Doing a natural show on drugs is about the lowest level I feel a bodybuilder can stoop, so I decided to find the easiest "non-tested" show around. I picked the Muscle Beach, a contest held outside in Venice Beach, right at the weight pit where most of the contestants are either out of shape or have genetics that are mediocre at best. Of course, sometimes a guy like Roland Kickinger (a winner in 1993) comes along just to pick up an easy win. You never know with that show.

I wasn't about to spend thousands of dollars on a true contest stack, which would have included Winstrol, Parabolan, Test Suspension, thyroid meds, and diuretics. Instead, I went with 500 mg of test a week, two Sustanons at first, and then Cypionate when I ran out, and good old Laurabolin 50. For fat loss, I took five Clenbuterol a day, two days on, one off. Since the test I was shooting was oil-based, I was doomed to hold copious amounts of water until the bitter end onstage. Still, I was dieting, looking good, and felt I had a good chance of winning. A week out, I was striated in most places at 210. I screwed up by going to a bachelor party for a pro bodybuilder one week out from the contest. Three strippers gave X-rated lap dances and performed outrageous lesbian sex with all kinds of toys, but it was the food that did me in�pizza and El Pollo Loco. Having dieted for six weeks (versus three to six months when I did it naturally), I should have been strong and left the slices of pizza pie alone. However, two joints that had been smoked with a bunch of rowdy bodybuilder friends driving over made it all a moot point. I think I scarfed down at least a whole pizza myself.

What also made me weak was a rumor that my arch rival was competing the next weekend in the same show. In 1994 and 1995, I had taken third and then second to him at two different contests. I knew I could beat him, but now I was hearing that he was also loaded up on drugs, only he was on the big-budget items, by virtue of his six-figure income. In fact, the weekend after the Muscle Beach he was competing in the NPC USA, the drugfest to end all drugfests at the amateur level on the West Coast.

The day of the show came. My rival weighed in at the exact same weight as me�205 pounds, at two inches taller. His 205 was a hell of lot tighter than mine, which made all the difference. The class had eleven guys, and it came down to him and me, as it had the year before. Neither of us had great shape, just a lot of muscle. It was no surprise when he won. I was happy enough just to have at last stood in front of a crowd and freaked them out. Days later, at the gym, an older guy who had attended gave me a stack of pictures he had taken. I had been lying to myself looking in the mirror, but pictures sure didn't lie. Now I could objectively see my 'roided up body as the audience had, and it was a mess.

First of all, my face was so puffy that when I gritted my teeth in most-musculars, I actually had jowls. My midsection was huge. My big butt, which used to lose much of its mass from dieting and stairclimbing in my natural years, looked bigger than ever, practically spilling out of my trunks. My arms were a little over 18 inches, but they looked just as weak in comparison to the rest of me as when they were 17 inches and natural. And as much as I had wanted to believe my back acne was barely noticeable from a distance, it looked like you could spend all day playing connect-the-dots back there. I hated to admit it, but even though I had more than twenty pounds more muscle, I looked better when I was natural! Ironman must have felt the same way, because even though I did a full photo shoot the following Monday, to date only three photos from that session have been used. In contrast, over 30 of the pictures from the '95 shoot have appeared, even in magazines from Germany, Holland, and Australia.

Having not gone off for more than six weeks so far, I took two months off and intended to stay off. But getting smoother, smaller, and weaker on a daily basis was psychological torture. After two months, I could no longer take it and bought a few 10-ml bottles of Steris Cypionate from the gym dealer. For what would be my last cycle, I took 750 mg a week for six weeks. That's a lot of test for the average person, and my acne was worse than ever. It seemed as if new zits would sprout up every time I wasn't looking. I would notice them on a delt halfway through training, go to the bathroom to pop it, then return with a bloody little hole that stood out even worse than the whitehead had. Eventually, I adopted many an off-season bodybuilder's uniform: the big sweatshirt.

Not long before this, Jeep Swenson, the 400-pound actor best known for portraying Uma Thurman's masked thug "Bane" in the ill-received "Batman and Robin," had died. I read a poem written by his 11-year-old daughter that broke my heart. I literally cried my eyes out every time I read it, and found it impossible to read aloud to my wife without choking on the words. If I had been the typical 28-year-old meathead with delusions of immortality, the poem would have meant nothing to me. Having lost my own father as a teenager and now being the father of a precious 3-year-old girl, I never wanted her to have to experience the black, utter sense of loss and grief I had known. If a truck hit me or lightning struck, that was one thing, but if I were ever to die prematurely due to a risk I had intentionally taken, that was far worse. And if that risk was for something as cosmetic and fleeting as big muscles, then I would be a truly irresponsible parent. I finished out the six weeks and called it quits.

I used to believe that everyone kept varying amounts of the mass they had gained from drugs. Most natural bodybuilders vehemently object to former drug users competing in natural contests, on the pretext that all men and women who have used anabolics retain a distinct advantage over lifetime drug-free athletes. Until my own experience, I also harbored this erroneous belief. In my case, this preconception proved to be false. Less than six weeks after my last injection in early November of 1997, other than the fading but stubborn acne, you would never have known I had ever used steroids. The fullness, the vascularity, the density, all disappeared. It was literally as if I had been an over-inflated balloon, and someone had let out one-third of the air. Embarrassed and depressed during this initial re-entry into mere mortal status, I took to staying completely covered up. The few times I wore a tank top were so disheartening that I would immediately cover back up, even if the sweatshirt was already soaked with ammonia-stinking sweat.

After a few months, I got over mourning the loss of my drug-fed extra muscle mass. Ironically, the most lingering side effect didn't hit until about a month or two after I ceased using drugs. Luckily it wasn't gyno or hair loss, thank God�it was injuries. Either I had been hurting myself the whole time with all the crazy weights and the Deca was masking the pain, or the strength gains faded more slowly than the muscle gains, putting my connective tissues at an increased risk. In either case, my left elbow became so painful that many exercises, such as any extensions with barbells or dumbbells, were impossible, and pressing for chest or shoulders could only be performed with a tight elastic support over the joint. My hamstrings suffered minor tears, one a month after the other, and for a brief time my knee was throbbing. I foolishly returned to squatting after a two-month reprieve and tried to do seven plates the first day. As you could guess, I wrenched my lower back and haven't been able to squat heavy since. All in all, though, I don't regret the experiment.

I needed to know what I was missing. I needed to be sure that I wasn't some potentially great bodybuilder if only I had some chemical assistance. I needed to know what it was like, if only for a brief time, to be superhuman, so big and powerful looking that nobody could look at me and not know instantly that I was a bodybuilder. Now that it's all gone, I do miss it. Not enough to go back on, but more like a married man misses an old girlfriend who was loads of fun sometimes, and unbearable at others. These days I've found that if I tan and stay lean, I look good enough so that I'm never tempted to do another cycle.

Right now, I keep at about 200 pounds and 7% body fat, and still dream of returning to the stage. After 12 contests over eight years, it would be unrealistic for me to say that I was really retired. If I do compete again, it would have to be a natural show. There's no way I would spend the ludicrous amount of money and risk my health to compete against young fools who will spend every last dime and take anything they can get their hands on, with dreams of Mr. Olympia dancing in their heads. I've got a wife and child, and they will always take precedent.

My journey to the Dark Side was a learning experience. Now that I've seen both sides of the fence, I have a perspective that most natural bodybuilders never get. Never again will I imagine that I'm just a drug stack away from a pro card. Never again will I think gains from drugs last a lifetime. And never again will I think drug users are evil, lazy cheaters who build monstrous physiques with almost zero effort. Drugs are a tool that some use and some do not. They are a personal choice, not a marker of moral character. They aren't a magic bullet, and they don't work as well for some people as they do for others. I don't regret my drug experiment, though I don't intend to repeat it. To those who choose to use steroids and other drugs to enhance their bodies and take them to a level impossible to reach naturally, I have no objection. To each his own. All I know is that, for me, the Dark Side was like many places I've been to�a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

T