Personal Training Articles

Steroids now and then

3/15/2016

In this article I am not going to discuss ethical questions about steroid usage, nor am I going to come up with a propaganda against steroids referring to their possible side effects. Rather I will try to compare today’s steroids with the ones that were available on the black market some ten years ago.

Years ago there were two types of steroids on the black market. The original ones and the fake ones. The fake ones looked almost the same as the original ones. Same labels, same packaging, same consistency and colour of the liquid in the bottles. It was hard to tell the difference between original and fake steroids. Obviously, if the label on a bottle was not straight, or batch numbers or expiry dates were missing then it was more than suspicious. But other than that, well made fake steroids looked the same as the original ones. Therefore, steroid users had 50-50% chance that they get original products. If they were lucky, they got the good stuff. If they were unlucky, only lord knows what they got. BUT: at least they had a quite fair “either this or that” chance to purchase original products (stolen from a pharmacy or from a drug company).

Recently, it has become harder to get original products. Due to tightening legislation and careful safety procedures, it is now more difficult (if not almost impossible) to take steroids out from drug factories or pharmacies. Even if somebody has a signed and stamped prescription for example for Clomid (which is not even a steroid, but a mild drug that steroid users take after their cycle to raise their testosterone levels back to normal), pharmacists will double and triple check whether the prescription was original and whether the doctor has really prescribed that drug.

An underground steroid lab. Does not look like a real laboratory!

Nowadays, as a result of successfully undermining the possibility to get real steroids, only one solution has got left… steroid dealers decided to produce their own products with their own hands.

In the last few years original steroids slowly disappeared from the black market. Instead, more and more underground steroid “labs” have been founded. Chemical ingredients and equipment for homemade steroids can be easily purchased online. Those who could afford to buy large quantities of chemicals and can afford to set up a home-laboratory, started producing and selling steroids from their garage/basement/living room.

No need to mention, these laboratories are not controlled and regularly checked by any official supervisory bodies. No need to mention, those who make these underground steroid products are not qualified and licensed doctors, chemists or pharmacists. No need to mention, health and safety, hygiene (neither on a basic, nor on an advanced level) are not up to those high standards that a real drug company would follow.

An underground steroid lab's warehouse. Does not look like a place to store drugs!

The jeopardy of using these underground products lie here: probably even those self-made underground chemists do not exactly know what can be found in their products. It is not a question of whether 70mg of testosterone in a bottle is really 70mg. The least dangerous part is getting only 30mg instead of 70mg, or getting 75mg instead of 70mg…

The real problem is that nobody really knows WHAT ELSE can be found in that bottle. As hygiene is not up to standards, nobody is aware of what other materials (dirt, bacteria, unknown ingredients) can get into these bottles. Neither internal nor external inspectors will check if a bottle contains what it says, and ONLY what it says, not other materials. The danger of taking underground steroids is this: your neighbour Joe, producing stuff in his garage might not wash his hands as often as he should… might not use gloves… might not cover his face… might not care about hygiene… might not care about using the right amount of ingredients… might not be aware of all that bacteria that his garage’s air and surfaces contain… and last but not least, perhaps none of these matters bother him. For him the most important bit is the possibility to earn some extra cash by selling pharmaceutically low quality, dangerously dirty products for naïve steroid users.

Some ten years ago steroid users had a 50% chance to get original products from pharmacies. Today, as underground home laboratories have spread all over the world, the chance is almost 0%. Only top level, professional athletes might have the opportunity to work with real chemists and doctors who produce their own steroids in a real safe environment. These high standard laboratories however are nowhere near to the average steroid dealer Joe’s laboratory. Hence an average steroid user can be almost 100% sure that he can never be safe with whatever he shoots into himself.

Handling steroids in the "living room steroid lab"...

Unfortunately, most average steroid users are somewhat mentally disabled... They say: “my dealer is selling me only real stuff because he is my friend. He sells crap to others only.”
How come every steroid user has a steroid dealer FRIEND? How come ALL steroid dealers only sell crap to OTHERS? How come always ONLY YOU get the "real" stuff?

If it is still not clear to everyone, there is no such thing as original steroids on the black market. No one can ever be sure what are exactly inside those underground laboratory made bottles. As mentioned above, it is not a question of whether you get what is written on the label, but it is a question of WHAT OTHER UNKNOWN ingredients (like dirt, bacteria, etc.) will you inject into yourself. Some ten years ago steroid users were worried about the side effects of the steroids. Today steroid users can worry about the side effects of the steroids AND the side effects of the unknown elements that come from the same bottle.

Stay safe. Do not inject anything into your body if you do not know what it is.

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