The EconomistJune 29th 2019 Britain 25R
hys callowayfirst went on the juice
seven years ago. At 21, he was fit but
skinny—football training every day at col-
lege had seen to that. He envied the bulging
muscles of his mates down the gym, and he
knew their secret. To make progress, he
needed to pinch the added ingredient of
their regimes: steroids. “Your veins are out,
your muscles are full, arms nice and tight,
chest puffed out,” he says. “All the compli-
ments started coming in.”
It is tricky to work out how many
Britons take anabolic steroids, synthetic
compounds derived from the male hor-
mone testosterone that promote muscle
growth. Users are often keen to imply that
they sculpted their bodies with hard work
alone. One user told a researcher from
Teesside University that his girlfriend
“wouldn’t mind if I told her I did some
crack [cocaine], but if I told her I took ste-
roids she wouldn’t even want to know me.”
Another reason for their reticence is
that steroids occupy a grey area between le-
gitimate pharmaceuticals and banned
drugs. They are legal to possess, but illegal
to supply. Most steroid users don’t see
themselves as drug abusers, and shy away
from health services. And since steroids
are “class c”drugs (the least serious of
three bands), they are not a priority for
cops. So academics reckon the official find-
ing that 310,000 Britons have taken ste-
roids is a significant underestimate.
Few doubt that use of steroids is grow-
ing. They were first knocked back by Rus-
sian weightlifters in the 1950s and later tak-
en by American athletes, generating a run
of doping scandals. But in recent decades
they have proliferated, first among ama-
teur bodybuilders and powerlifters and
now among large swathes of men keen,as
one puts it, to “look like a beast”. Official
statistics suggest that the number who ad-
mit to ever having taken steroids has
swelled by 70% in the past ten years. So
common are “’roids” in some gyms that
sharps bins for needles are provided.
Most users take steroids for cosmetic
purposes. Some combine a short courseof
steroids with tanning drugs to get “jacked
and tan” before going on holiday; others
are keen to keep up with others at the gym
or to look like their idols on Instagram. So-
cial media fuel competition between rival
gyms, or “meat houses”. Some have posing
rooms with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on ev-
ery wall for selfie-snapping. Steroids arealso popular among gay men and those
who need to look beefy for work, such as
prison guards and bouncers. One crimi-
nal’s heavy told Georgios Antonopoulos,
another Teesside academic, why he started
taking steroids: “You have to look like a
hard bastard.”Gym’ll fix it
There are users everywhere, but some evi-
dence suggests steroids are particularly
prevalent in post-industrial places. Take
the Valleys, once the industrial heartland
of Wales. According to Public Health Wales,
a government agency, 64% of patients at
needle-exchange clinics there say they use
steroids or other image- and performance-
enhancing drugs (known as ipeds), com-
pared with 37% in Cardiff, the capital.
“Many young working-class men were so-
cialised to believe physical labour is the
male activity,” says Mr Antonopoulos. Now
that they work in call centres and super-
markets rather than mines and steelworks,
steroids offer a way to retain the traditional
trappings of masculinity. “If you look at my
job now, it’s just sitting at a desk,” says Mr
Calloway, whose grandfather was a miner.
Like many users, Mr Calloway first
bought his steroids from a dealer. These
dealers are quite different from the crooks
who push harder drugs, though. Small-scale user-dealers buy their gear from un-
derground labs in Britain or import it from
countries where it is cheaply and readily
available, such as Turkey. They are often
gym owners or personal trainers, for whom
profit comes second to being seen as “bro-
kers of masculinity”, says Mr Antonopou-
los. About a quarter of users buy online.
Several forums allow people to compare
the quality of different websites’ products.
The Welsh authorities quickly recog-
nised the problem. Two years ago the then
public-health minister warned of the “wor-
rying number” of young men buying the
drugs for cosmetic reasons. Mike Mallett
set up a specialist ipeds clinic in Newport
after noticing that more and more patients
visiting his needle-exchange were using
steroids. Staff at the clinic take blood sam-
ples and give advice on reducing the risks
of injecting or swallowing steroids.
Studies suggest that steroid users risk
less damage than smokers, drinkers or us-
ers of most illegal drugs. But they often ex-
perience side-effects like acne, shrinking
testicles and low libido. Because of the ex-
tra pressure placed on their bodies, users
also risk serious long-term complications
such as cardiovascular disease and im-
paired liver function.
At Mr Calloway’s first visit to the New-
port clinic, he chats through his steroid re-
gime with a doctor. “What dosage is safe?”
he asks. He confirms that he never shares
needles and the doctor tells him that his in-
take is “not that horrendous”. He will have
to wait a few weeks to get the results from
his blood sample. Whatever it says, he
seems unlikely to quit. “It has no limits,” he
says. “Every time you look in the mirror,
you still think, ‘I could be bigger,’ so you
just keep going.” 7NEWPORT
A neglected region goes from mining coal to pumping ironSteroids and societyWelsh beef
I am weak but thou art mighty