The Nightmare Of Steroids

Another thing that had gotten to me was trying to compete with the black guys. I hadn't played against many blacks, and they intimidated me with their strength and speed. I'd say that all but a couple of the guys on my team who used steroids were white, and the reason they did was to keep up with other guys on steroids and with black athletes. There's no question in my mind that there's a difference in black and white body types. I don't know why, but I could see the difference in the locker room. And I knew it when I played against blacks. So a lot of white guys take steroids to even things out.

I made my decision, and the funny thing is, I felt good about it. I was looking forward to the adventure of it and the chance to perform at my best. The thing people often don't understand is that college athletes feel tremendous pressure to succeed. Some guys have parents who are pushing them real hard. Other guys are just very .competitive and have great pride. Nobody wants to sit on the bench and be a failure.

After I'd made my decision, getting the stuff was no big deal. I had spent a lot of time back home at a gym where serious lifters worked out, and I think by now everybody knows that the majority of bodybuilders and powerlifters use steroids. I had a friend there, and I knew he could get me what I wanted or tell me where to go for it. He got me some steroids, and I told him I also wanted hGH, human growth hormone. He told me where I could get it.

I knew hGH was expensive, but I'd read in a muscle magazine that it was safer than steroids, and I wanted to believe that. I also knew that hGH could cause acromegaly—the enlargement of the brow, hands and feet that's sometimes called "Frankenstein's syndrome"—but that you'd have to take megadoses for it to happen. Some bodybuilders take $10,000 worth of hGH per cycle—that's a bodybuilding term for a series of drugs in varying doses—but I only got $800 worth, enough for 10 injections over eight weeks. Tunnel vision had set in. My attitude was: Just give me what it takes to get big.

Still, I was pretty scared because I'd heard all the horror stories about the drugs. My supplier told me that if I didn't get too crazy with this stuff, didn't abuse it, I'd be O.K. Then we went down into his basement at home, and he gave me my first injection, in the top of my butt. I went right to the weight room and had a great workout. I was pumped, but, of course, it was all psychological.

I had a lot of injections that summer, and after a while the spots I had to hit on my rear end got so callused from shots that at times I couldn't even get a needle in. You don't inject steroids into a vein. It's not like heroin or something. You shoot it deep into a muscle, and it gradually disperses through the body from there. It's very hard to shoot yourself up in the butt, and sometimes when I did, I hit spots that hurt so bad I could barely sit down the next day. Other times I'd shoot myself in the quad, the front of my thigh. It's dangerous because you have to go in an inch or so, and you can cause nerve damage if you're not careful. But if nobody's around to inject you, you have to do it.

You can take most steroids in pill form, too; but you have to take them every day, and certain pills can be harder on the liver. With shots you don't need to do it as often—12 times a month, in my case—and the drug stays in your system longer. At first I was very worried about needles, but after a while my concern went away—mainly because my body was changing so fast.

People who say steroids don't work don't know what they're talking about. You've got to experience it to know what I mean. Your muscles swell; they retain water and they just grow. You can work out much harder than before, and your muscles don't get as sore. You're more motivated in the weight room and you've got more energy because of the psychological effects of the drug.

I went from about 210 pounds to a lean 235 in eight weeks. My bench press went from the upper 300's to 420, and my squat from 400 to 520. I watched my diet and I was really cut—big arms, chest and legs, great definition. I went back to Columbia in the summer of '84, before my first varsity season, for the Iron Cocks meet, a lifting competition for football players. A bunch of guys who were already on steroids saw me and said, "Aha, so you bent to the pressure."

I said, "Yeah, I've begun the chemical warfare." And we laughed. Washburn saw me and said, "You look great!" He must have known I was using juice.