Steroids Don't Work Out

Some athletes use steroids in an attempt to improve their athletic performance. Other young persons use the drug because they are insecure about their appearance.

Anabolic steroids may help you increase the size of muscles. But if you take the drug to improve your athletic performance or your appearance, think again.

What Could Happen?

Why would you take a drug that could:

• give you acne?
• cause your hair to fall out?
• shrink your testicles?

That's not what you want if you're a young man looking for big muscles.

If you're a young woman using the drug, you could get:

• facial hair
• a lower voice
• irregular menstrual periods

If you are still growing, anabolic steroids may permanently stunt your growth.

Medical experiments in animals show that anabolic steroids make the tendons weak, and that may result in tearing or rupture of the tendon. Tendons connect muscles to bones.

If you buy anabolic steroids from illegal sources, you never know if they are pure. You could take a drug that is tainted. Sharing needles to inject steroids has been linked to AIDS.

A Habit That's Hard to Kick

You have to keep taking the drug to keep your new look or the muscles will shrink. That's why users who are obsessed with a new body image find taking anabolic steroids a habit that is hard to kick.

Anabolic steroids can make you uncontrollably aggressive and combative, even with the people you love. Steroid abusers often have arrest records. Although the psychological effects are reversed when steroids are discontinued, the social scars will remain.

When you stop taking the drugs, you may get deeply depressed. Many former steroid abusers tell of suicide attempts.