Unless you have managed to escape from the media for a few years, you have inevitably seen or heard about the steroid accusations and admittances in proffessional sports in the last few years. So why, if the publicity and suspiscion is so high, would an athlete use steroids?
There are, unfortunately, many reasons that athletes of the modern age choose to use steroids, even in sports such as baseball where steroids are banned and looked for constantly. Athletes will do anything to win, and unfortunately this occasionally includes breaking the rules.
The most obvious reasons for an athlete to take steroids are nearly guaranteed effects. The athlete will experience an increase in their power, strength, and muscle size due to the increase in testosterone. They will also find more endurance in their body, and will experience an increase in their own aggression and competitiveness. These are all qualities that any athlete will cherish, so it is tough for many athletes to reject steroids when it is so easy to get ahead of the game.
If an athlete feels that they will get an extra edge on their opponent and thus a greater chance of winning, they will do anything to acheive this greatness. Taking steroids will not stop them or build up on their conscience. If they see immediate results - faster bat speed, more endurance, or quicker healing time (believe it or not, many athletes who take steroids count on a quicker ability to heal more than anything else), they will continue to do what works for them until something or someone stops them.
As silly as it may sound, some athletes also take illegal performance enhancing drugs simply because they do not know what they are putting into their body. Nearly every proffessional athlete has an individual trainer, who provides them with propper diets and medicines. Many simpler steroids are believed to be dietary supplements, simple pills that athletes may take on a daily or weekly basis because they were told to. However, many of these dietary supplements are illegal and are just as dangerous as the other steroids.
Only in the last few years has that authoritarian figure been established in Major League Baseball, the sports league in which it seems the most steroid problems occur.
Unfortunately, steroids are rarely perscribed to patients by doctors anymore. Their uses have stemmed from actual necessary healing to making the strong even stronger in unhealthy ways. Hopefully athletes will eventually reject - not inject - steroids, and once again rely on the skills and fundamentals that got them where they are today.
