The Bodybuilding Race to the Top

From pro bodybuilding to baseball, steroids have taken the world by storm. Everyone is trying to get bigger than the next person, and the health aspect of bodybuilding has been thrown out the window. These chemicals are used to make you stronger, faster, leaner in a short period of time. They promise the world, but in the end they fail to deliver. From when I was in high school, I noticed football players and friends starting to use these illegal supplements. They would gain sheer muscle mass to the extent of 30+ pounds in a short time frame (8-12 week cycles). They could get all the girls they wanted but they were never happy. Most of them would only work their upper body and their quads and calves would be scrawny. They looked totally disproportionate.Sometimes they would walk on their hands as a joke because they knew they were too lazy to work their chicken legs! This muscle mass would soon start to disappear rapidly, and they would start suffering from gyno (enlarged breast glands). They would get depressed and start another cycle, then another - it was an ongoing cycle. Some of them have to be on steroids for life because their natural testosterone levels are equivalent to that of a 100 year old grandmother!I also noticed an increase in aggression in these individuals and lots of acne. One guy's ears and jaw line got bigger as he was on human growth hormone which has bad effects on your cartilage. I could go on and on telling you about the many negative side effects caused by performance enhancing drugs. To those that use steroids, it is no longer about being healthy – it's only about gaining that next pound of muscle. This is why I decided that I will never use steroids. My life is so much more valuable to me and I believe that natural bodybuilding is the only way to go!Steroids have spread across the planet like a plague. My country of origin is Pakistan and even in Pakistan they are having issues with them! The big sport in Pakistan is cricket and Shoaib Akthar and Mohammed Asif, two of the best on the Pakistani team failed for steroids. I am not even going to get started at all the names of people who failed steroid drug tests in football, baseball and a lot of the other sports. Sure these "juicers" will get to be bigger than a natural athlete and maybe faster, but they're always fighting to get as big as someone else. They will never be truly happy and content with themselves.Now if you're a natural bodybuilder on the other hand, you know the true meaning of dedication. You are doing natural bodybuilding for yourself and your own health. I believe that all players in all sports should be drug tested for steroids but this is just too expensive as these tests cost $700+ per individual. Since this is out of the question maybe a better monitoring system is to monitor players' excessive changes in body composition over short periods of time. This is being done now and the rules are finally starting to get strict as they should be. I believe anyone failing this system should automatically be kicked out, no fine, just removed from the sport. I don't think any professional athlete should be allowed to play in a sport if they are using illegal performance enhancing supplements.