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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Should California voters worry about Schwarzenegger's past steroid use? Depends on whether you believe scientists -- or tales of 'roid rage.
Sep 30, 2003 | Of all the California gubernatorial candidates, only one has inspired a nickname for a Schedule 3 controlled substance. The candidate is Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the substance is anabolic steroids, or -- as some illicit users have dubbed them -- "Arnolds." It's only fitting that Schwarzenegger is immortalized in this way, since he epitomizes the promise of steroids: monstrously big muscles that can morph a scrawny nobody into a ripped he-man with health, wealth, popularity -- and maybe even a shot at running the most populous state in the country.
The past steroid use of the seven-time Mr. Olympia, five-time Mr. Universe, and one-time Mr. World is no secret. Schwarzenegger portrays his doping as a youthful indiscretion that, despite its career-enhancing effects, he would prefer to put behind him. Appearing on "Larry King Live" in August, he said that using steroids "was stupid, because it was in the late '60s, early '70s, when we didn't know any better." Campaign spokesperson Karen Hanretty explains that "Arnold has made it clear that if he knew then what he knows now, he wouldn't have taken steroids." (Not that he's always been remorseful: In 1996, he told the Los Angeles Times, "It was a risky thing to do, but I have no regrets. It was what I had to do to compete.")
For over a decade, Schwarzenegger has condemned all athletic and cosmetic steroid use. As the head of the President's Council on Physical Fitness under George Bush the elder, he urged kids to stay off steroids and instead rely on hard work to reach their athletic goals. "There are no shortcuts," he told USA Today in 1990. And according to Schwarzenegger's personal Web site, his Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition was the first of its kind to require drug testing.
His anti-steroid message is pretty standard "Just say no" stuff: Steroids are unsporting and, since 1990, illegal. But when it comes to talking about what steroids can do to you, Schwarzenegger steers clear of specifics. Talking with King, he explained, "In the late '70s and in the early '80s, research was done and you found out that it's actually damaging, that it causes side effects and it is bad for your health." He wasn't inclined to elaborate on how that might relate to him personally. In a 1988 Playboy interview, he insisted that steroids hadn't harmed him: "I don't worry about it, because I never took an overdosage. I took them under a doctor's supervision once a year, six or eight weeks before competition. I was always careful and checked, and I never had any side effects."
He repeated his claim of a clean bill of health a few years ago to the Los Angeles Times, referencing one rumored ill effect of heavy doping. "I have no health problems," he said. "No kidney damage or anything like that from using them."
Schwarzenegger has good reason to be cagey when talking about the long-term effects of anabolic steroids. More than a dozen years after Congress outlawed their nonmedical use and put them in the same category as amphetamines and barbiturates, the verdict on their ultimate health consequences is still out. Researchers and doctors say they have good reason to believe steroids can cause serious harm, but despite decades of dire warnings, they're still scrambling to find scientific proof. On the other hand, there's surely no solid evidence that pumping up with steroids is exactly good for you, either.
Anabolic steroids, more accurately known as anabolic-androgenic steroids, are synthetic versions of testosterone. Though they have legitimate medical uses, they are best known as a way to beef up in a hurry. In the 1930s, researchers discovered that when fed to animals and humans, these compounds made muscles bulge and fat melt away. Though rumor has it that German athletes took testosterone in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the first documented use of performance-enhancing hormones by an athlete involved an aging racehorse named Holloway in 1941. By the time Schwarzenegger discovered steroids in the late 1960s, humans were in on the action, too. Competitive athletes from NFL linemen to East German swimmers regularly popped, injected and openly praised them. The editor of Track and Field News hailed steroids as the "breakfast of champions." Over the next three decades, their use spread from pro athletes to high school jocks, gym rats, and ordinary guys who just wanted to transform their paunches into six-packs.
From the start, it's been clear that synthetic sex hormones can come with a slew of undesirable side effects. Men who take them may lose hair, grow breasts, and develop acne. If that weren't enough, steroids can, as the hardcore bodybuilding mag Muscular Development puts it, "make your testes the size of peanuts."
Women who take steroids may grow unwanted hair and see their breasts shrink and clitorises grow to what one dismayed user once termed "embarrassing proportions." Steroids can also fuel aggression -- not necessarily an undesirable outcome for competitive athletes or Hulk wannabes. As Dr. Charles Yesalis, a professor of public health at Penn State and an expert on nonmedical steroid use, recalls, "An All-Pro NFL player said to me, 'If you're an asshole before you use steroids, you're a bigger asshole after you use them.'" In rare cases, heavy users may become unpredictably violent, a psychological condition popularly known as 'roid rage.
