Giving Up Drugs

Ever since the beginning of time, the drive to compete and be the best you can be has been a goal of humankind. Throughout history many athletes have stored food and potions to transform their bodies into giant body builders, and amazing athletes.

Athletes eat huge quantities of meat and protein to build their muscle mass. They workout day in and day out, and the results only come in time.

It was in the 1860s that for the first time athletes were accused and charged with taking drugs and nonfood substances to enhance the body's performance. Swimmers in Amsterdam were doping, taking anything to help their body work harder, faster and longer than any other athlete. They took anything between caffeine and strychnine to heroin and cocaine. Eventually it spread throughout the sports industry worldwide over the next several decades.

Athletes using anabolic steroids is somewhat recent. Testosterone was first discovered in the 1930s, about 10-20 years later steroids were introduce into the sports arena. In 1952 the Russian weight lifting team walked away with a good amount of medals during the Olympics. Later an American physician came to the conclusion that every U.S Athlete in sports should all have the same advantage...

By 1958 a pharmaceutical firm in the U.S developed a drug called anabolic steroid. After developing this substance, physicians realized the drugs had side effects that were all unwanted. By that time though, as is often the case, it was too late, anabolic steroids spread throughout the sports community worldwide.

The sports that most used anabolic steroids when it was first introduced was sports that need great amount of strength and body mass. These sports were mainly bodybuilding, football, weight lifting and shot put.

During the 1970s other athletes in other sports saw the competitive level rise dramatically, and the edge that anabolic steroids seem to provide.

The discovery of the anabolic steroids in the 1980s introduced the world to steroids, shortly after the black market began to flood with illegal anabolic steroids that were being sold for non-medical purposes all over the world.

So you see anabolic steroid abuse is well entrenched into the sports society and, despite continued warnings in schools and gyms, there are always unscrupulous people waiting to tempt newcomers and gym rats alike into abusing steroids and becoming drug addicts.