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Steroid Abuse
Dr. Ritchi Morris has worked with players from many professional sports and olympic athletes enduring anbolic steroid and other illegal drug use. He asserts that anabolic steriods can be just as addicting as any other illegal or perscription drug.
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Steroids' Side Effects: Depression, Paranoia

BODYBUILDERS, POWERLIFTERS AND other muscled athletes who bulk up on anabolic steroids risk physical consequences such as liver damage, heart disease and impotence. Now they can add some mental ones-depression and paranoia.

A 16 -athlete study by New York -based sports psychologist Ritchi Morris has tied steroid overloading with a depression syndrome commonly found among alcoholics and cocaine abusers. Morris found that the eight athletes using steroids all experienced significant depression during their off cycles. Three even developed a psychological dependency, choosing to use steroids year -round rather than face the depression and negative self -image involved in down cycles.

Morris' eight nonuser control group contrasted sharply with the users, showing almost no mood swings between peak and off -training periods. Some indicated they even felt better when not training because the had more time to spend with family and friends. In all cases the natural lifter's confidence level remained high: the users' sank.

"It's comparable to the feeling one gets when he's hooked on coke or alcohol," Morris says. "They come off the stuff and they watch themselves deflate like a balloon with a slow leak. They can't lift that 450 pounds anymore. Their bodies got back to what they were."

When off steroids one male user said his problems seemed bigger and appeared to over-power him. Female bodybuilder said that when off, she felt "loose, flattened out, sloppy and not pretty. And I sure ain 't sassy. "

Morris says depression levels varied among subjects, but all experienced paranoia. Doubts about friendships and relationships occurred along with a lowering of self image.

"I wouldn't be surprise., It [depression] has been mentioned a number of times," says Dr. John Lombardo of the Cleveland Clinic, a co-author of the American College of Sports Medicine's position paper on steroids. "These people have a strong sense of well-being and how they look and feel, and steroids give them a tremendous up."