Anabolic steroids

From Drug Rehab Wiki

Anabolic steroids are drugs made from natural or synthetic male hormones. Their medical use is to build up muscle mass in people who have muscle-wasting conditions such as AIDS, muscular dystrophy, and cancer. Although it is against the law to use anabolic steroids without a prescription, they are widely available on the Internet, in gyms, and through advertisements in body-building magazines. Athletes and bodybuilders abuse steroids in order to achieve increased muscle mass. At any given time, five percent of high school students are abusing them.

Anabolic steroids are often sold as dietary supplements in the form of powder you sprinkle over food, but they also come as injectable liquids or pills. Side effects can be headaches, irritability, tiredness, severe acne, skin rashes, fluid retention, increased blood pressure, oily scalp, and increases in "bad" cholesterol and decreases in the "good" kind. Men who use steroids experience painful erections, impotence, shrunken testicles and enlarged penises. If taken by young people, steroids interfere with normal sexual development. Long-term use is linked to liver cancer, heart attacks, and strokes.

However, the most notorious side effect is called "roid rage" or extreme mood swings and aggressiveness. This leads to assaultiveness, poor impulse control, impaired judgment, depression, delusion and even psychosis.

Steroids are physically addictive. Withdrawal symptoms can be mood swings, depression, insomnia, reduced sex drive, loss of appetite, fatigue and suicidal ideation. Too sudden withdrawal can cause very severe muscle collapse.

Many people addicted to steroids have deep-rooted psychological problems and need professional therapy. One study of bodybuilders using steroids found that one in four had been sexually abused. Many have very poor body images and distorted views of what is normal muscular development.