IN THE MIX: "STEROIDS"
[VOICEOVER]
This "In The Mix" special was made possible by the National Institute On Drug Abuse.
SHOW OPENING
SCENE: A boy is seen working out in the gym.
[MATTHEW]
When I look at steroids...I can't believe how many times I actually stuck the needle in me. Where I came to the point where I would just...it was absurd...just to, just to look good.
SCENE: The various drugs on the market.
TITLE SEQUENCE [Steroids: The Hard Truth]
[KEVIN SORBO]
It happens everyday. You see someone on TV or in a movie or magazine that's got that...Well, they got that great body. They're buff and they're firm. They've got these built-up biceps and triceps, and they've got these amazing six pack abs. Maybe it's the look you've been striving for, maybe it's just the look you've been dreaming about, or maybe you've been tempted to try steroids as a way to finally get it. I've never used anabolic steroids and I never will. Today on "In The Mix" we will show you the hard truth about these drugs. We're gonna meet an ex-user. We're gonna visit a teen to teen prevention program. We'll also see how they get in shape naturally, with the right kind of exercising and nutrition. Take it from me, it really does work. But first up, let's look at why steroids are a growing problem.
[MARLON]
I don't think it's a surprise that there is a market for people to wanna get steroids and wanna try them and wanna spend money on them. We make it seem like it's necessary to have the perfect six pack of abs or eight pack of abs, and we make it seem necessary to not have any body fat whatsoever, you know. And there is tremendous pressure especially on teens because they've just come into learning about themselves, learning about their bodies, learning about who they are as human beings. So the pressure is on...
[DAVID]
Being in high school is always, like, a self-image thing, and like, I remember for myself, it's like, you always have these guys. Everybody is standing around, you know, like much bigger guys, and you're concerned with you're own personal look. And me being always, like, I was always the slimmer guy. I've tried myself to gain weight, it just never happens and if ever I considered, like, doing it's because of that, because of that whole self image thing.
SCENE: Girls are seen playing a game of basketball.
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
Media influences girls to promote a body type that is not healthy.
[KATIE]
In my family, it's hereditary to be large, and I have tried and tried and tried to stay at a smaller weight, but with my genetics my stomach will not be toned in the way I want it to be.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
The steroids in young females are linked to the attempt to become thinner or at least have less body fat. They're body shaping drugs. It increases muscle, but decreases fat, and so it's very tempting for young women to start using anabolic steroids.
[KATIE ]
I can't eat cookies, I can't eat candy, I can't eat this, and it was too hard. And I was doing 250 sit-ups a day and pushing myself so hard.
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
Girls think that it's abnormal to gain 12, 15 pounds during adolescence, of body fat, but that's normal.
SCENE: American football game in progress.
[ANNOUNCER]
Number three, interception, middle of the field.
[MIKE]
As competitive as sports are these days, any way someone could reach their goal without doing it, the long way like I said, you know what I mean, take the short cut... they're gonna go for that.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
There are just too many kids out there who think that taking steroids can put them over the hump, and that maybe if they were just that much bigger and faster and stronger then they'd make it to the pros.
[CATHERINE]
My goal from when I was young was to play college ball, and then I see these huge 6-foot, 6-foot 2 women playing basketball, and it's very hard for me because I'm smaller.
[OFF SCREEN GIRL]
A lot of pressure is like at school because a lot of the kids, like guys, male friends, they were like "you oh didn't make the team," and that is because of...you'd not have worked yourself harder and tell yourself that you're not good enough.
[BOY (RED T-SHIRT)]
At some high schools, like, a lot of parents put a lot of pressure on them and just, like, rip on them every time they do something wrong in a game, and I guess that would drive some kids to, you know, to take steroids so they'd be better than they already are naturally.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
I'm glad my coaches don't try to push me to use steroids. That'll be... sort of undermine their position as a leader and a role model, but I know that there are coaches out there who do push their kids to do whatever they can to get bigger and stronger.
[BOY (GREEN T-SHIRT)]
I think that if, they... If the coaches want their kids to do that, I think that the coaches are really wrong about that, and they're probably just looking out for themselves, to make themselves look better if the team wins.
[GIRL (GRAY T-SHIRT)]
If you are in a sport and you know that you have your other athletes, your other teammates around you, and you know that maybe they are at the level, like the right body weight and stuff like that you wanna be at, you know, you don't wanna be different, maybe from the rest of your team, and so you would have a temptation to try steroids.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
One of the myths about steroids is it's going to turn everyone into an athlete. They can get a college scholarship or a professional contract. So it's not something that will turn you from someone who is not a very good athlete into a high-powered elite athlete.
[DR. ALAN LESHNER]
A lot of national heroes, sports heroes, talk about their own steroid use as if it's good for you.
[MIKE]
If you see role models in the media that are using them, then that's definitely gonna influence kids to try to use it because you know they look up to these figures.
[IAN]
If you see, like, a sports figure use it... that makes you, like, you'll think it's okay just because they're using it.
[GIRL (RED T-SHIRT)]
The scary part is that steroids are very available.
[CATHERINE]
I could go anywhere and get them.
[GIRL (BLACK BANDANA)]
If I wanted to do it I could.
[MARLON]
If I were to, like, I wanted to get steroids or something like that in high school, there would be a way of getting it.
[MIKE]
If you go to a gym or your workout, it's always in your face.
[DR. ALAN LESHNER]
One of the things we're most worried about is that we're seeing a decrease in the perception of harm and the less harmful you see something, the more likely you are to use it. So with steroids, we're very worried that because people see them as less risky, they are more likely to use them in the future.
[MARLON]
They don't really educate you on the side effects of steroids, and that's why a lot of kids in high school won't even know about it... won't even know all the side effects.
[DR. ALAN LESHNER]
Most of the use of steroids that we see, of course, is in the young athletes, but we're starting to see other young people who think they need to be buff...they need to be muscled up in order to be attractive. And of course steroids do that, but at the same time they're tremendously harmful to your body.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
There are many risk factors that include both medical and psychological.
[DR. ALAN LESHNER]
Boys are different from girls and the truth is that steroids are gonna affect them differently.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
For females, it could be permanent lowering of the voice and masculinization with facial hair growth.
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
Potential loss of scalp hair, getting harrier on their body, developing acne. It can cause some menstrual irregularities that are probably reversible when they stop. If you start to grow facial hair, it generally doesn't stop growing when the hormone goes away. You have to have electrolysis or deal with it in some other way. If you lose scalp hair, it's gone. So those changes are irreversible. Some of the changes in their bodies: less body fat, increased lean body mass, those will go away.
[MELISSA]
You can have breast size reduced. It affects your heart rate.
[GIRL (BLACK BANDANA)]
It can hurt your liver.
[CATHERINE]
What surprised me was that the clitoris gets enlarged...
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
But all those effects take time to develop. Some of them happen relatively quickly, within a few weeks, like the voice deepening and that doesn't go away when they stop the hormones.
[CATHERINE]
I watched a TV program one time, and it had women athletes that were involved in the Olympics, thirty years later, and they were talking about how the effects on their voice. And their voices were very manly. They had hair. They were repeatedly trying to get it removed and they couldn't, and some of them couldn't have children.
[LEIGHANN]
Like nobody wants to have that for the rest of their life. I mean, who wants to, you know... I think that if people were aware of that they'd probably be like, I don't want that you know....
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
For males it can be breast enlargement, hair loss.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
You get like acne, I think, real bad acne.
[MALE (RED T-SHIRT)]
You lose your hair.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
Yeah you can lose your hair.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
And loss of sperm.
[OFFSCREEN (DR. LESHNER) ]
Men tend to develop male sexual characteristics of most types. Although because it shuts off your brain's signal to make your own androgens, you can wind up with shrunken testicles, and impotence and all other kinds of problems like that.
[MALE (GREEN T-SHIRT)]
They shrink.
[MALE]
Yeah, I don't think guys want their balls shrinking.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
Can you say that on TV?
[DR. ALAN LESHNER]
So what's happening is that at the same time that you think you are increasing attractiveness by building muscle... you're also reducing some of the same characteristics that make men and women most attractive.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
For the medical problems, they include cholesterol problems, elevated high blood pressure, increased clotting, heart disease, even malignancy. There can be problems because they share needles. 25% of the steroid users share needles, so increased risk for HIV disease and hepatitis. Not all the changes do vanish. The breast enlargement in men will stay, so some of these are permanent. And for the adolescent, which is very severe, is it can stunt your height. The bone growth stops...it freezes and the person would be at that height after they use steroids.
[IAN (TRAINER)]
I do know teenagers, and friends that have taken steroids. I think part of it is because sometimes they don't know, they just don't realize how well they can perform just by eating right, and exercising right and following what their coach tells them to do with a good work out program.
[KEVIN SORBO]
Well, it's okay if you want to get toned to feel good about the way you look, or improve your athletic performance. But taking the steroid shortcut comes at a high price. One that your mind and your body will pay for a long, long time.
[MATTHEW ]
When I look at steroids, I can't believe how many times I actually stuck a needle in me, where I came to the point where we just...it was absurd, just to look good and to look big. I was a honors student. I had a B+ average. I was doing very well. What happened was, I had a girl friend for a certain amount of years...she dumped me. You get into depression, you know, then I started working out because I wanted to look good because I felt she broke up with me because, you know, I didn't look good enough for her. And I ended up getting into steroids in the gym. The bad thing is that you know it could ruin someone's life. Steroids took over my life because I became dependent on them. I felt that if I didn't take them I would never grow. I would never get big or I would never get stronger without them. It totally brought down my grades and it totally just took over my life. The only people I knew were my friends, they weren't even really my friends, they were just acquaintances that I did steroids with and then hung out with. And I depended more on them and the steroids than I did on my education and the people that were important around me. I became very distanced from my parents. They would, you know, tell me to do this, tell me to do that, and I would be, like, no, and I'd get aggravated and mad and angry and yell and scream. Sometimes I would even, you know, try to take a swing at them or...I just...I was very edgy all the time. I didn't think before I acted.
[IAN (TRAINER)]
Roid rage is when those individuals who are taking steroids, their moods, any little thing can set them off, that would seem to a normal person just a minor inconvenience it can turn them very angry.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
The psychological problems include increased aggressiveness you can't control, and paranoia.
[KATIE]
I know a girl who was on steroids, and I don't know if she is any more but her attitude was a lot different. She was more irritable and wasn't nice to be around.
[OFFSCREEN (BOY)]
It just makes you, it brings out all this aggression and hostility and just puts the person on edge and basically destroys the whole personality.
[CATHERINE]
You know, it can change your attitude. I think a lot of people don't think that, I think they just think, hey, it can make my muscles bigger.
[GIRL (BLUE SHIRT)]
As a girlfriend of somebody that is doing steroids, it was hard because he was extremely violent, he would grab me, push me downstairs, clench his teeth and be like... it was any given day that he would just freak out and blow up. You never knew when the time bomb was going to go off.
[MATTHEW ]
Steroids aren't like crack and not like cocaine. They're not on TV, talked about. Its like a secret society. I realized that when my friends started asking me how I look like this, there was a way for me to make a lot of money and that's when I started dealing steroids and saw that there was a market for the product.
[REPORTER-TV NEWS CLIP]
Twenty-year-old Mathew M., originally from Long Island, is accused of buying the drugs and then reselling them.
[MATTHEW ]
In the beginning of March, March 9th, I was arrested for selling steroids, I had an enormous amount of steroids on me.
[TV REPORTER]
Matthew faces two counts of possessing a controlled substance.
[MATTHEW]
When you are in involved in illegal things, that it's not worth it. I mean, I spent... I was in jail with crack addicts. I was in jail with violent people, and I felt that I wasn't someone that belonged in there. I made a mistake. I didn't know how dangerous they were. I didn't know how... that they were that illegal that you would be charged with felony.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
Anabolic steroids are at least psychologically addictive. Likewise, they do cause some withdrawal depression that occurs when athletes stop using them.
[MATTHEW]
Even six months after I was arrested, I'd feel that, I need totally to like to go back to the gym. Which was very hard to go back to gym to see people using them, and it's just the whole mentality. Once you take them it's very hard to get over them, and that's the addiction process. I won't use them again because I know where it will lead to. People should know that, that steroids they do something to you in the inside that you don't see on the outside and that can affect your life and how long you live.
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
Sometimes people think that if I don't take the real testosterone, I won't get the side effects. But all these pro-hormones...male glandulars...Those all have side effects just like testosterone does. You don't prevent the side effects by taking the precursor drugs.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
There are approximately 1000 supplements that are just for athletic enhancement. Rarely have any been studied to show whether they work or not.
[MIKE]
I am sure a lot of people think it's alright to use a supplement instead of the steroids, just because steroids are illegal and anything that's, like, not illegal is seen as okay.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
There is no stigma against kids who do it, and there's a couple of kids in our school that I know of...they take lots of supplements.
[BOY (RED T-SHIRT)]
Ya know, throw it into your drink. It's not like you're taking a needle and like sticking it in your arm.
[MIKE]
I felt really out of shape, you know, for a long time and I wanted, like, a quick fix, and so I started taking supplements thinking that it was okay. I can just lift weights naturally and you know it gets bigger too.
[MARLON]
I see commercials for supplements all the time on TV. I mean a lot of these things like a billion people who have lost a hundred thousand pounds in three minutes... you know things...I mean it goes to those extremes.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
The problem with some of the supplements is you don't know what you get, that they are not followed and closely monitored so really it's, may the buyer be aware.
[CATHERINE]
Or you can buy some from stores.
[DR. DIANE ELLIOT]
Some of the drugs have things like ephedrine and the stimulants that make you feel peppy and that maybe contaminated with ephedrine, ephedra. So that's what really peps you up and that's the drug that's had deaths associated with it, seizures, heart problems. So there are side effects from the agents that are in there, that you don't know anything about.
[CATHERINE]
One time I did try one of those pills for a soccer game because I was so nervous and it completely messed my whole game up.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
Likewise they are very expensive. Many of the protein powders and carbohydrate powders, you can get the energy much cheaper from food.
[IAN]
But I did take some protein powder, until I realized how much I was actually spending on it and I think chicken and tuna taste a whole lot better anyway.
[DR. LINN GOLDBERG]
And they're balanced protein versus the proteins that are incomplete often in these supplement, so what you're doing is essentially wasting money.
[IAN]
I was lifting and I was doing great, I was still increasing and I realized I've still got half-a-bottle left, I found at the bottom of my bag, and I realized I really don't need to spend my money on this. When you eat right, you exercise diligently, you can make the same gains and make your body perform as it was supposed to.
[BOY (BLACK T-SHIRT)]
Not to take any of these pills or powders, it's really not worth it.
[IAN]
I started leg pressing at around 135 and now I'm at a 1000. It takes a lot of time and takes a lot of effort. You have to be in the gym...you have to take dedication just like anything else, like your studies or anything else.
[NIKKI]
Hi Kevin, I'm Nikki from "In The Mix."
[KEVIN SORBO]
Hi Nikki, how are you doing?
[NIKKI]
Good. How often do you work out?
[KEVIN SORBO]
I started working out when I was a...when I was a junior in high school, then I started lifting, but I've toned it down for this new series.
"ANDROMEDA" clip
[KEVIN SORBO]
I'm actually about 25 pounds lighter than I used to be. When I played Hercules I was out there pretty big and I was, you know, buff, and I was always working out. But now on this, with the new show, I'm only working probably about three times a week in the gym and one day I'll come in and just do nothing but legs. That's all I do. Then the next day I'll just...I'll run, play some basketball, like I said. The second day I come in, in the week, and I do arms and I do shoulders and on the third day, I do chest and backs. But I always take a day off now between each one to let a muscle group, you know, rest and that's what you're supposed to do. But like I said, when I played Hercules I didn't do that. I lifted every muscle group, everyday, all the time and it wasn't really that... I was over training, and that wasn't the right way to do it.
[NIKKI]
I saw you were doing a few rows. Can you show me how you work this?
[KEVIN SORBO]
I certainly will. This is the rowing machine. It works like your lower...actually your upper back. I got the wrong part of the back. This is for your back and you squeeze your shoulder blades together. You gotta keep your body nice and tight. What people don't do when they're doing this exercise is exhale on the exertion. A lot of people inhale on the exertion that's the wrong way to do it, but lucky for me I've got light weight going here, so I can sit here and do these all day. I'm not going to lie, there you go...
[NIKKI]
Great.
[KEVIN SORBO]
Now let's meet some athletes who are participating in a program to educate themselves and their teammates about the dangers of steroids.
[MELISSA [(ATHENA TRAINOR)]
I mean it's very serious choice to become involved with steroids, so through Athena we're trying to prevent steroid use by talking about other ways that they can get strong. Like doing their own exercise programs, eating right, getting enough sleep, those types of things to try to prevent the idea that they need this expensive supplement or steroids to help them get stronger.
[DR. ELLIOT]
We started the Athena Program modeling it after Atlas, the program for football players, high school football players, to deter anabolic steroid use. Use the same principles in formatting the program, making it team-based, peer taught.
[IN-CLASS GIRL]
Making partially blocks your blood's ability to carry oxygen, which is needed to make the muscles work efficiently.
[MELISSA]
It's very effective to use team leaders when working with team members because peers listen to peers and they listen to them more than they would listen to me or to an older person.
[IN-CLASS GIRL 2]
Yeah it affects your bone growth, and it can permanently stop the growth if it gets to that point.
[LEIGHANN]
From the Athena program, I guess that helped to, you know, like, become stronger. The lifting weight thing, and just learn how to train.
[MELISSA]
You need to do cardiovascular exercise for about 30 minutes minimum to get the benefit and to get your heart rate up. Weight training is important along with cardiovascular exercise because it helps increase the muscle tone and put stress on the bones, whereas cardiovascular exercise is more for your heart and your circulation.
[IAN]
You want to cycle. A lot of people do the upper body one day. Next day they work the lower body. So they get exercise each day, by this way they're allowing the upper body to recover and also when they go back to work upper body, they let their lower body recover.
[KATIE]
I wanted to get out of Athena program also eating correctly.
[MELISSA]
The information that we're trying to convey through Athena about nutrition is that moderation is the key in everything.
[DR LINN GOLDBERG]
For male athletes, we tell them to eat about one gram of protein per pound of body weight and 26 times their weight in calories, for adolescent females it's less calories, but still higher amount because they're athletes and they're growing and they need the calories to burn. Likewise they need a little more protein as well. So we have them increase the amount of protein to about one-and-a-half times the RDA equivalence so they're eating more protein, eating more carbohydrates, but eating less fat.
[KERRY KUEHL]
By far, food is the best for muscle development and performance. Recently the high protein, low-carbo diet has gotten the rave, but if you look at the data on this still, carbohydrates by far are the best for performance and the best for overall muscle growth and development. However, you do need certain amount of protein every day for muscle growth and development. If you weigh 130 pounds, you should get about 100 grams of protein a day and you can get that through the best sources probably would be the milk, egg whites, chicken, fish, turkey. So you'd have to a can of tuna, which is about 30 grams, a chicken breast is another 30 grams, and then four cups of milk to get you 100 grams of protein a day.
[MELISSA]
You also need to have some amount of fat in your diet so that you can have cushioning around your joints, and so that your muscles can work properly.
[IAN]
The benefit of having more muscle, which comes from weight training is that muscle burns calories. Even when I'm just sitting here those muscles are burning calories. They need to be sustained.
[KERRY KUEHL]
Many times it's just choosing better foods. For many individuals they may be eating snacks and so it may be just eliminating that snack or that one dessert a day and simply exercising an extra 20-30 minutes a day. So it really all comes down to what you take in and what you burn.
[DR LINN GOLDBERG]
The teens in our program increase strength, decrease body fat, increase muscle mass, and they've won more contests.
[GIRL (GRAY T-SHIRT)]
Of the Athena program, I like to get just being okay with my body. I want to be myself and just to be happy with that, and know that I can be as healthy, you know, as I can be. But I'm not always trying to be someone else that I'm not.
[BOY (GRAY T-SHIRT)]
I had lot of coaches that emphasized drinking water, emphasized eating right. They weren't worried about my figure, they were worried about me taking care of myself and developing as an individual.
[MARLON]
There are alternatives to using supplements, and there are alternatives to using steroids. Such as having a balanced diet. Such as constant exercise. You don't have to push yourself to the point where you need to take a drug in order to fulfill some type of physical desire for your body.
[KEVIN SORBO]
Well that's it for today just remember that what you do to your body today really does matter for the rest of your life. And you can't be strong on the outside if you're not that way on the inside too. Using steroids even for a short time, it just isn't really worth the dangers. To find places to learn how to workout the right way, you can check out your local gyms, the YMCAs, and the other community center.
[NIKKI]
Thanks a lot for coming today.
[KEVIN SORBO]
Hey it's my pleasure Nikki, and thanks for having me "In The Mix."
[VOICE OVER]
For more information about this and other "In The Mix" shows you can check out at our website at pbs.org. You will find transcripts, discussion guides, video clips, resources, how to get a copy and lots more. To email your opinion or advice for any other team, you can do so at "inthemix@pbs.org", or you can write to us at:
IN THE MIX
114 East 32nd St.
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[OFF SCREEN (BOY) ]
This In The Mix special was made possible by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
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