Nick Gillespie on athletes using steroids:
Performance-enhancing drugs are simply one tool among many that top-level athletes use to maintain their edge. Yes, yes, if a given organization or sporting authority bans them, players should respect those rules. But I'm convinced that one of the main reasons drugs are banned is simply because they are "drugs" and we have a bizarre, fucked-up relation to drugs: We all practice better living through chemistry but we are quick to cordon off good drugs from bad.
Much of the anti-drug rhetoric in sports is that certain substances screw up the "natural" essence of the players and that they disrupt "the level playing field." If any of that is true, then why not ban weight training? Or off-season conditioning? Or players who fall outside of certain heights and weights that might give them "advantages"? Or any semi-secret strategy plans or routines devised by cagey coaches and managers? Or a countless number of other things that can give some players an edge? Why are drugs seen as contaminating sports in a way that other interventions--all of which are precisely designed to give indivduals and teams an advantage in competition--are not? Especially since, in the end, it's far from clear that drugs, any more than hugs, "raw talent," or a winning attitude, make the player? Success in sports is an unpredictable mixture of a thousand different variables. So why single out drugs--or more precisely a small subset of drugs--as pernicious?
I agree with Gillespie's "bizarre, fucked-up relation to drugs" diagnosis. In many cases that relationship is, I believe, one of simple Puritanism: people resent steroids because steroids work. Steroid use makes it possible to achieve things rapidly, in terms of strength, recovery, and hypertrophy, that are otherwise obtainable only through long, hard slogging. Therefore, use of steroids constitutes "cheating." I don't buy it.
Do people -- athletes and fans -- have a legitimate right to expect that a sports federation which bans anabolic steroid use among its athletes will not feature athletes who do incorporate steroids into their training regimen? Sure they do. Powerlifters who compete raw are at a serious disadvantage against those who compete juiced. But that doesn't make steroids, or steroid use, evil. And does Dianabol, to take one example, have a lot of side effects? Yep. So does aspirin. All drugs have side effects.
There's a more balanced -- even positive -- examination of steroid use and its application to anti-aging medicine here. Sample quote: “There’s a joke in the medical community: When someone has something nice to say about the work we’re doing, they use the word hormones. When they don’t have something nice to say, they like to call them steroids.”
Ahhhh, did someone mention Puritanism?