Attorney Alex Coolman made some interesting observations in his blog regarding the comments made by a personal trainer in the Dallas Morning News. The trainer cited by Coolman explains:
With steroids, you’re tricking your body. You’re creating something that’s not you, and that’s why you’re cheating.
Coolman finds it odd that society believes a muscular physique created with the help of anabolic steroids is somehow “fake” or “dishonest.” He then points out society’s hypocrisy when it comes to steroids:
It strikes me that the use of steroids is no more “artificial” or blameworthy than the use of SSRIs or other drugs that are commonly used to modify mental health, and yet we attach a tremendous moral stigma to modification of the body.
I think he nails the driving force behind the steroid hysteria.
Underlying the rhetoric on steroids, as with much of our national discourse on drugs, there is a profound and puritanical discomfort with the mere possibility that somebody could somehow live more easily or more pleasantly because of chemicals. It’s fine if people use steroids to recover from an skiing injury so they can get back to work and behave like an ordinary person, but God forbid they should use any more steroids than necessary and thereby they become unusually strong or unusually powerful. That would be “wrong.”
The puritanical righteousness is even more pronounced with regard to steroids than with other drugs because of the underlying eroticism associated with the steroid-enhanced muscularity that our society moral guardians find morally disturbing.
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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