DEATH IN THE LOCKER ROOM
Adverse Side Effects of Steroids Are Real — And Often Fatal

By Jim Evans

Let me tell you a story about a former world-ranked boxer. He’s

legless now and confined to a wheelchair. He’s living proof of the dangers of steroids. There are others who are not so lucky, because they’re dead.

This man once ranked among the world’s top 20 heavyweights. However, he tried to gain an edge — more size and strength — by using anabolic steroids.

He got bigger. He got stronger. But inside, he was destroying himself. Before long, he had several heart attacks, blood clots and gangrene in his limbs. By the end of 1987, his legs had been amputated because of the effects of anabolic steroids. Today he’s confined to a wheelchair.

How do I know this? That person is me — and I can tell you from experience — steroids are not worth the risk!

Please stay off of steroids, no matter how much you want to win, or how much someone tempts you to use them.

— Robert Hazelton

(Bob Hazelton once fought George Foreman for the Heavyweight Title)

The title of this article is borrowed from the 1984 book “Death in the Locker Room,” by Dr. Bob Goldman (“Death in the Locker Room II” is now on sale at www.Amazon.com) and is as appropriate today as it was 20 years ago, when Goldman was warning people about dangers of steroids.

Young people everywhere, men and women alike — many of them athletes or athletic “wannabes” — are using anabolic steroids under the false premise that any potential adverse side effects will happen “to someone else,” not them.

There is an epidemic of steroid use in this country that is quietly being shoved under the rug because parents, coaches, and school administrators refuse to face the fact that steroids are dangerous — and illegal — drugs. But nothing has really changed.

Even 15 years ago, Dr. Robert Voy, the former chief medical officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee and former medical review officer for the NFL Players Association, estimated that 10 percent to 25 percent of high-school preps were using steroids.

“Kids as young as 12 and 13 are taking steroids,” said Voy, one of the leading experts on the abuse of performance-enhancing drugs. “And in my experience, many parents of steroid-using young athletes are completely oblivious of what their child is doing.”

USA Today reported in December 1990 that steroid use among college football players was as high as 29 percent. The mean projected rate of use among men was 14.7 percent and 5.9 percent for women at that time.

Professional wrestling (let’s call it what it really is — “wrassling”) has largely built its reputation on oversized caricatures on steroids. Yet, the sport — let’s call it physical entertainment — has experienced 65 deaths in the past seven years (“Behind fun façade, professional wrestling sees 65 deaths in 7 years,” Jon Swartz, USA Today, March 12, 2004), largely attributed to the abuse of steroids and human growth hormone.

According to Keith Pinckard, a medical examiner in Dallas who has followed wrestling fatalities, professional wrasslers are more than 12 times more likely to die of heart disease than other Americans ages 25 to 44. Mike “Road Warrior Hawk” Hegstrand, Richard “Ravishing Rick Rude” Rood, Curt Henning, Davey Boy Smith, and “Flyin’” Brian Pillman are just a few of the recent wrassling casualties attributed in part to steroid abuse.

Former NFL All-Pro Lyle Alzado died of brain cancer at 39 after a long history of steroid and human growth hormone abuse. During his career, he suffered from numerous bouts of “roid rage” both on and off the field. At one time, his cholesterol count was higher than 400, and a plastic surgeon twice removed baseball-sized lumps from his buttocks, where he had injected himself over the years.

Before he died, Alzado was quoted as saying, “Whoever is doing this stuff, if you stay on it too long, or maybe if you get on it at all, you’re going to get something bad from it. It is a wrong thing to do. If you’re on steroids or human growth hormone, stop. I should have.” (“I’m Sick and I’m Scared,” by Lyle Alzado as told to Shelley Smith, Sports Illustrated, July 8, 1991). Enough said.

UPDATE

According to information in a recent California study released at the Steroids & Athletic Stimulants Summit in Inglewood, Calif., more than 3.5 percent of high-school seniors — or more than 14,000 in California — have used steroids, and more than 3 percent of high-school sophomores have used steroids — more than 15,000 in the state.

Don Hooton of Plano, Texas, whose son Taylor committed suicide in July 2003, thought to be the result of depression suffered from the use of steroids, is leading the effort for mandatory testing by taking his message to Congress and to the California Legislature. The California Interscholastic Federation is considering a policy of testing, and state Sen. Jackie Speier will introduce legislation for mandatory testing in high schools.

(“CIF Tries to Take Lead in Curbing Prep Steroid Abuse,” Nicole Vargas and Steve Brand, San Diego Union-Tribune, Oct. 13, 2004).