Steroids
By Shae, April 2005
Steroid use among teenagers is rising at an alarming rate, hitting an all time high in 2002, according to the NIDA. Harvard Medical School did a study that same year and found a shocking 500,000 teenage boys used steroids. The danger is not limited to males. Today, steroid use is growing most quickly among teenage girls who crave its fat burning power. Today’s society, unfortunately, is all about what is bigger and better. Steroid scandals break every month or two; athletes in some sports claim it is impossible to compete without taking something to get an edge.
Critics say that the messages of athletic culture encourage rather than discourage steroid use. Cocaine and heroin addicts aren’t elevated socially in high school or college. But if a bench-warming football player puts on 45 pounds of muscle over a summer, he’ll likely be rewarded with a starting spot on the team.
Steroids are illegal unless prescribed by a doctor. This does not stop teenagers from obtaining them. Teenagers find steroids through contacts at the gym, someone’s older brother, or online. A Google search of “buy steroids” brings up 987,000 hits. Some of these websites include detailed description of dosage and pictures illustrating how to inject.
Parents need to be aware. Steroids can have devastating and irreversible affects on your children. They can cause men to grow breasts and stop the production of sperm. Using steroids over extended periods of time can contribute to heart, liver and kidney diseases. It can make women stop menstruating, grow male genatilia, and experience bitemporal balding. So what can you do as a parent? Know the signs. Here is a quick checklist from the 2005 March edition of Spirit Magazine that can help you stop a problem before it is too late:
- Has your child gained muscle very quickly, say 20 or 30 pounds over two or three months? Is he or she suddenly much bigger and stronger than anyone else in the family?
- Has your child suddenly lost a lot of fat, making muscles look “cut”?
- Does your child suddenly have very severe acne after having few problems before?
- Are your teen’s mood swings more severe than usual?
- Is your kids’ skin flushed when it wasn’t before?
- Do your child’s joints suddenly seem out of scale with the rest of his or her body? Are their wrists or knees too small for the limbs around them?
If you answer yes to several of the questions above, talk to your teen about steroids.
Public Service Message
Dr. Chlovechock, a doctor who deals with a lot of teens, is so worried about teen steroid use that he puts out public service messages, “I want you to ask your kids about steroids. When you’re watching baseball, engage them in a discussion. Do you think that’s fair, if someone’s using steroids? Is that why you play the game? We’re sending our kids off to baseball and basketball practice. We think we’re keeping them off the streets, away from drugs. But it’s not just the kids hanging on the street corner doing drugs. It’s the good kids, too.”
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