Steroids in Today’s Society
Nowadays some athletes will do all most anything to get the upper hand on their competition, and instead of putting in hard work and training some go to performance enhancing drugs. The main reason anabolic steroids are taken is to improve their athletic performance, increase muscle size, and to reduce body fat (NIDA). What some athletes don’t know is that anabolic steroids have serious long term effects that can damage the body and even lead to death, and once they stop using the steroids they lose strength, and then become addicted. When they become addicted and start abusing steroids they call this “cycling” (NIDA). Steroid abuse is a serious growing problem with athletes of all ages and levels, from the professionals, college athletes, high school kids, and even lower. Reports show that in the year 2005, 1.5% of all eighth graders have used some type of steroid at least once in there life time (NIDA). When I read this, I thought it was crazy that some one as young as thirteen or fourteen has tried a serious drug to get an advantage on their competition. Some people believe that since the use of steroids is so wide spread that other young athletes are using them. This is because they believe they need to be able to compete with the ones by using steroids. I also believe most of it to do with our society. Today, kids see an athlete on T.V and want to be just like them, but just don’t have the athletic ability or work ethic to do so, so they turn to performance enhancing drugs. Parents have a part in this too. Some parents put all this pressure on their kids to be the best that they will do what ever it takes to make them proud. We can also blame the professionals for having an impact on young athletes. The professionals are supposed to role models for the young and up coming stars. In the last couple of years many professionals have been caught using steroids and it has been all over the media. For example Roger Clemens and Barry...