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Comment by travisjungroth | Hacker News Reader

It's not a "or", it's "and". Steroid use is very common among celebrities, especially male action stars. Celebrities have physiques in time frames and at ages that just aren't possible otherwise.

No hate to them for doing it. But it's important that we're at least honest about it because of the effect it has on people's (especially men's) own body images and ideas about transformations. Losing 60 pounds while packing on muscle in 6 months at 38 years old is not possible without gear.

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Actually there is justified hate for them doing it. They're promoting unrealistic bodies which is causing a huge amount of problems.

Safely taking steroids to achieve a movie star look is just about as realistic as driving a new Mercedes.

Sure, you need to spend some money on medical supervision. Beyond that all it takes is ~6 hours a week at the gym.

>But it's important that we're at least honest about it because of the effect it has on people's (especially men's) own body images and ideas about transformations.

Steroids are mostly there to aid recovery from the otherwise unmanageable amount of work one puts in. Most people are limited by their willingness to put in the work and never reach the point where steroids would be required (or even make a significant difference).

This is not true. Steroids have huge effects other than recovery, they'll provoke far greater response for the same amount of work.

You can get somewhat faster results using steroids (provided you are a decent responder and don't experience strong sides), sure. However, the overwhelming majority of people complaining about (often hypothetical) drug users are not putting in even minimal effort and haven't taken the time to learn how to train properly. I'm unconvinced that this is anything but a way to protect their ego and simultaneously feel cheated of the god-like bodies they would most assuredly have if it wasn't for their superior morals and judgement. It comes as no surprise that those very people don't get anywhere once they hop on gear, which is something I've witnessed firsthand a few times.

It's not just somewhat faster, the difference is often huge. You shouldn't let your personal experiences and anecdotes get in the way of the science here, what you wrote earlier about steroids only aiding recovery for people who put in large amounts of work was ridiculous.

I don't see how it is ridiculous. Can you get a great body with hard work and intelligent programming without anabolic steroids? Yes. Can you get it without hard work and with anabolic steroids? No [cue that one study where they gave test to people for ten weeks and they gained a few kilos of water and glycogen weight]. Can you become a mass monster without either? No. Now what I personally find ridiculous is how people complaining about "unrealistic bodies" prefer to promote unrealistic expectations of what AAS do instead like they're some sort of black magic.

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