Hacker News Reader

Comment by eyeJam | Hacker News Reader

If anyone's ever watched the documentary "Bigger, Stronger, Faster*" they raise some interesting points questioning why steroids are demonized. Professional musicians take beta-blockers, athletes get laser eye surgery and take cortisone and opiate shots before/during competition, programmers take Adderall and Modafinil, male porn stars shot their penises full of drugs to stay erect for hours on end, etc. etc. Plenty of examples of professionals "cheating" without widespread media outcry and pearl-clutching about the sanctity of the profession.

Furthermore, taking steroids won't improve your muscle-memory, proprioception, agility, sports IQ, etc... In my opinion they should be allowed in sports in some limited cases, such as recovering from an injury, where it would be administered in a controlled environment by a licensed doctor to accelerate recovery. They're a very useful drug if used properly.

View on HN

Unfortunately the problem is that they work too well. Every time they are legalized in a limited capacity they are abused in professional sports.

The effect is massively amplified if you give women drugs because they don't have testosterone levels like men do. Those records that were set in the 70's pre-testing will likely never be broken.

The issue is that if it is legal, there is a huge incentive to take it to an abusive point especially in a celebrity economy like what exists is professional sports.

In some sports, professional athletes are almost constantly injured. Off the top of my head I can give you MMA (UFC) and american football as examples but I'm sure there are many others.

Healthy sports end where competitive sport begins.[1]

Right now we have an arms race that barely keeps it at bay. It's not an ideal solution but I think its better than athletes fully abusing their bodies with massive amounts of drugs like they did back in the East German Olympic days.

For non-professional athletes, I agree with you. It should not be demonized to the extent it is.

1. Quote from Brecht, referenced many times, e.g here http://gladwell.com/drugstore-athlete/

The issue that athletes abuse the drugs seems like a problem the athletic association/league/body should prevent instead of classifying anabolic steroids as schedule III drug.

Agreed.

I do agree that it should be up to the professionals, but consider amateurs moving into professional sports.

If college football players can't take steroids, they will get __destroyed__ in the NFL. If college players can take steroids, then highschool players will stand no chance at moving up. Likewise, if you make it fine for high school players, middle school gets punished, etc.

I don't doubt that professionals could successfully regulate it and do it (mostly) responsibly. I have a severe lack of faith in desperate parents living vicariously through their kids in little league games.

I think you are being a bit generous in assuming that a steroid ban in professional sports means that they are not used. In practice, it means that they must use them clandestinely, but I wouldn't be surprised if a future analysis reveals most of our top athletes of today are using PEDs. Additionally, highschool athletes are generally untested, meaning that highschool is their one opportunity to get ahead by whatever means necessary before attempting to carry that advantage forward with more conservative approaches in college and professional sports.

It's hard t believe NFL players can maintain that size without some type of help. There is definitely a lot of unreported PED usage going on.

That's a great documentary. If you haven't heard of it: http://www.biggerstrongerfastermovie.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com