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'Roid rage | page 1, 2
Steroids can also flick switches in the user's mind, altering personalities and inciting overly aggressive behavior, commonly called "'roid rage." Diane Williams says she was sexually voracious during her steroid cycles; professor Todd says that steroids can act as a triggering mechanism for violent behavior. Last year, a Sports Illustrated article reported on the unusual number of bodybuilders behind bars for homicide: Bertil Fox, a former Mr. Universe, is incarcerated for the murders of his girlfriend and his girlfriend's mother. California bodybuilder John Riccardi awaits execution for a double homicide. Another California muscleman, Gordon Kimbrough, is serving 27 years to life for the murder of his fiancée. A female strength prodigy, Sally McNeil, is serving a life sentence for the murder of her bodybuilder husband. The list continues; while Todd cautions against classifying all bodybuilders as pathologically prone, no other sport comes close to paralleling bodybuilding's criminal record. The physical effects of steroid abuse can be equally devastating. Immediate effects in men can include shrinking of the testes and severe acne. Since anabolic steroids boost testosterone levels, women manifest their effects to startling degrees. Women are virilized; their voices can deepen, menstruation becomes irregular or nonexistent, they can experience male-pattern baldness and risk sterility. In either sex, however, the organs most susceptible to steroid abuse are the heart and liver. Former NFL lineman Steve Courson developed cardiomyopathy -- a condition that enlarges the heart and causes it to weaken -- toward the end of his eight-year football career in 1985. Throughout his stint in the NFL, Courson, who has two Super Bowl rings, was injecting and ingesting massive quantities of steroids. Doctors cannot confirm that his condition, which is terminal without transplantation, is linked to steroid use. Courson maintains that rampant steroid use was condoned by the NFL and that his ailment is no coincidence. He sued the league for full disability benefits, but in June the courts denied his claim. He is now appealing the decision. Eric Marciano, the writer, director and producer of "Artificial Athletes: The Dangers of Steroids," an educational video highly touted by the FBI, classifies Courson's NFL era (which lasted from the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s) as football's "golden age of steroids" -- an era that also included Hall-of-Fame running back Walter Payton. Like Florence Griffith Joyner's mysterious demise in 1998, Payton's death from bile-duct cancer this month will never conclusively be pegged on steroids. Evelyn Ashford, apparently one of the few track stars to compete chemical-free, won the Olympic 100-meter gold in 1984. Pat Connolly, a former Olympian who coached Ashford, suggests that Payton's recent passing has to be regarded as suspicious. "For every person who knows about steroids or has used them," she says, "the first thought that passed through our minds when we heard of Walter's liver problem was that it might be steroid-related." Connolly is among the few sports insiders who have taken an adamant stand against steroids in sports. She testified alongside Williams and Ashford at the Senate hearings in 1989, and she took considerable flak for her respectful but blunt remembrance published in the New York Times after FloJo's death. She wrote that "Florence's face changed ... her muscles bulged as if she had been born with a barbell in her crib ... It was difficult not to wonder if she was taking some kind of performance enhancing drugs." Connolly maintains that the key to steroid eradication lies in early education. Studies conducted by Dr. Yesalis indicate that 38 percent of steroid users are introduced to the drugs before the age of 15 and that the number of high school males who have used anabolic steroids sometime in their lives is approximately 375,000, or an astounding one in 15. Most encounter steroids from peers or through the Internet, where a mind-boggling array of sites can easily furnish an illicit home pharmacy of performance-enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, there is very little organized activism against the abuse of steroids. The only recognized prevention efforts are a Portland, Ore., program called ATLAS (Adolescent Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids), which has made considerable headway in the Pacific Northwest, and Marciano's educational video. Teenagers and amateur fitness fanatics have otherwise been left to their own decision-making devices -- something Todd sees as a bad omen. He refers to two independent sociological surveys of recreational but competitive runners and bodybuilders. Each group of approximately 100 athletes was given what he calls a most "Faustian bargain": The athletes could take a magic substance that would transform them into uncontested world champions. The athletes could live at world-record levels for a year, but at the end of that year, they would die. According to Todd, when asked if they would be willing to make that bargain, slightly over half answered yes. Obviously, says Todd, the possibility of a little extra acne or the long-term chance of a weakened heart is not going to curb steroid abuse. "If even the certainty of death isn't always a deterrent," he says, "what can we expect to stop it?"
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