Short
term use of anabolic steroids have a valid purpose. As we age, we lose our capacity to heal from ilness, wounds
close more slowly, fractures don't join as they do in the young. A brief course of steroid supplementation can do
wonders for the older adult who needs to regain normal muscle mass, improve appetite, and strengthen the immune
system. Medical doctors are well aware of these beneficial properties of steroids. Generally they will refuse to
prescribe them, primarily out of fear that they will show up on a DEA watch list of "pill doctors" and have their
license revoked. This was the same misguided
thinking that caused many doctors to refuse to adequately medicate patients for pain, often terrible pain, as the
DEA bureacracy had a model where those who legitimately needed large or long term doses of opoids were, by
definition, persons with drug abuse problems.
In the 1990s there was such an outcry from sufferers of chronic
pain conditions that a new dialog was opened between medicine and enforcement that recognized that pain was not "all
in your head" (even though, technically it is) but was a real, massively debilitating dysfunction than needed
appropriate medicine.
Today there is a similar demonization of steroids, which have been given a bad name
because of a hypercompetitive sports culture imposed on teen agers who are now suffering from an unprecedented level
and range of sports injuries normally only seen in professional competitive athletes. I would submit that the
problem isn't steroids, per se, but the professionalization, and quasi professionalization of youth sports that
puts totally unreasonable demands on youth, often poorly informed youth who have decisions forced on them by
demanding parents who want to vicariously live through their children's achievements or to confrom to group
fantasies about the prowess of youth. The tragedy is that many of these young are essentially having their teen
years stolen from them in an effort to satisfy the narcissistic demands of an older generation. Many teens will turn
to performance enhancers in order to live up to a deranged expectation which they have come to accept as physical
normality.
Prohormones and steroids have become a convenient scapegoat for a culture that doesn't want to
confront its' sins against its' children, pushing them to the point where steroids may be the only option for
gaining social approval at an age when social approval counts for everything.
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