How are steroids used? Steroids can be taken in the following two ways, in pill form or by injection. Most illicit users take the drugs in "cycles", or for a period of several weeks or months. This helps them recover from some of the short-term side-effects, like testicle shrinking, breast development, and infertility. Some athletes take even higher doses, called mega doses, to produce faster results. Taking these kinds of anabolic steroids, is a particularly dangerous method known as "stacking".
What leads to negative side effects? The biggest factor leading to negative side effects is misuse. Most of the negative effects are more prevalent in a person who has used large quantities of androgenic substances for extended periods of time. Steroids can cause health problems, which leads to many changes inside the body that can not be noticed until it is too late. Steroids also can have the following affects on mind and behavior: "Roid rage"- severe, aggressive behavior that may result in violence, such as fighting and/or destroying property. Hallucinations- seeing or hearing things that are not really there. Paranoia- extreme feelings of mistrust and fear. The long-term physical side-effects are also dangerous; steroids can increase levels of bad cholesterol and decrease the good stuff, HDL, boosting the risk of hardened arteries, heart disease, and stroke. .
Every sport-the people who govern it, the media who cover it- can be measured by how it stacks up on the issue of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. The NFL quakes through its version of "roid rage", lashing out at ESPN and forcing the network into canceling the series "Playmakers", because the league wants to drive home the point that it has zero tolerance for any kind of steroid use, even the fictional kind. In the NBA steroids is a small issue because they have a raft of bigger concerns -namely, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, PCP and the hormones that raged in a Colorado hotel room last summer.
