Steroid Use in Professional Sports - Does It Matter?

Massive topic of discussion over the past few decades to help bring an end to this banned substance use. The unfair advantages that stem from steroids can vastly affect the outcome of their physical performance dating back to the 1950s, when Russian bodybuilders were taking testosterone to compete in the Olympics. The pros may seem to outweigh the cons in the eyes of some of these professional athletes, but they are banned substances for a reason and have been for quite some time dating back to 1975 when Anabolic Steroids were added to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) banned substance list.

Since then, countless sports organizations have adopted the World Anti-Doping agency’s (WADA) code as they call it to one day produce a dope free world of sports.

Steroid use can have a lasting negative effect physically, mentally, and emotionally as well as ruin everything these athletes had worked so hard to accomplish in their life. In bodybuilding for example, those athletes push their bodies to the brink of destruction to make sure every last striation is present and for what? A nice trophy or a decent cash prize.

Bodybuilding is more of a solo sport and a competition with yourself to see how deep you can really dig. Long term health risks like kidney failure, liver damage, tumors, enlarged heart, high blood pressure and increased risk of blood clots are just a few to list but there are many more. Depending on how the athlete gets the steroid in the body, HIV/AIDS is always a possibility from needles.

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Male bodybuilders may suffer from a disorder called “Body Dysmorphia” where the athlete is after that perfect muscular body that their mind will never produce. Maybe that’s the battle in itself or is the feeling of never being big enough, the most vascular, rep out your max bench, or that your hard work in the gym isn’t paying off. Now these may be extreme circumstances for the average professional bodybuilder whose whole life is his so-called image, but don’t you think the stress of that alone would cause a bodybuilder to start using and abusing steroids to maintain their persona? The physical effects done to the body are sometimes irreversible or fatal, but with modern technology most of the side effects can be reversed.

Now the UFC is a different story when it comes to steroid abuse and fighters using them for the actual physical advantage over the opponent. The fighters in the UFC are now strictly drug tested by USADA, which is, “the official, independent anti-doping agency for the UFC” . Prior to 2015, the anti-doping policy in effect wasn’t that effective so the fighters could get away with more. The before and after images are pretty significant. Now, with how advanced testing has become they are able to detect an amount of these known steroids at such a level we cannot fathom. Jon “Bones” Jones for example, just tested positive for a picogram of an oral turinabol prior to a UFC event, and they allowed him to fight. He was suspended in the past for the same steroid, but the trace amount found on the positive test was so miniscule, they ruled it to be from the original case 18 months earlier and stated that no new ingestion of the drug has occurred. This is where it gets a little tricky because Jones is about to fight another man who has always tested negative.

Would you agree to fight him based on the evidence provided backing by science and USADA approval? It’s hard to say what decision would be the correct one. Would the picogram of turinabol found have won Jones the fight still? But a positive test result is still a positive test result, no matter how you look at it. Other fighters in the organizations took offense to this gesture and rightfully so. What precedent will this set for guidelines down the road? Those days are upon us and only the future will unfold what is to come in the professional sport of UFC and anti-doping.

Of all sports, the NFL has to be the worst offender of players testing positive for steroids. Each and every year players test positive for performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs. There are critics who say that the NFL’s policies on substance abuse are pretty laid back compared to other organizations. Only handing out four game suspension for PED use and a fine may seem like a lot but that’s nothing over the course of a football season. Maybe the players are using them to get an extra edge on the competition and hopefully slip through the crack, or they’re battling an injury using the steroid medicinally to speed up the healing process. In a sport like football there could be a significant benefit to using PEDs, like the ability they have to rapidly increase recovery time between workouts. The more you can work out effectively, the better, faster, and stronger you’ll be on the football field. The possibilities would be endless, but that risk seems too high to take. And these same risks fit into all sports with an anti-doping policy. Modern science and medicine has brought these athletes to a physical level no one has ever seen before without the abuse of steroids and it should remain on that same progression of having drug free athletes.

Will steroid use and professional sports evolve or eventually fizzle out because of stricter rules and regulations? Throughout all professional sports, there are clear benefits in performance whether its bodybuilding, UFC, NFL, baseball, Olympic athletes, and even at a college level students are testing positive for steroids. The drive to do them may be provoked by watching better athletes perform, making you want to get an edge on the competition. Test results don’t lie and the benefits are clear, but the moral standpoint of a professional athlete should be greater than the drug.